#wildfire-resilience

#wildfire-resilience

The FOFA helps America increase our resilience to catastrophic wildfires, restore forest health and build fire-safety defenses for communities in high-risk areas. It's a good bipartisan start (rare these days!) to protecting forests so trees can continue their important work pulling climate pollution out of the atmosphere. In the U.S., the annual area burned by wildfires has more than doubled over the past 30 years. In California alone, acreage burned by wildfires every year has more than tripled over the past 40 years.

Malibu High School, which opened in August, is located in an area that Cal Fire (the California Department of Forestry and Fire Protection) recently designated as a very high fire hazard severity zone. This means that the school, which has replaced a nondescript building from the 1950s, had to comply with stringent fire safety regulations. The new school is distributed across two connected buildings. It was constructed entirely of noncombustible materials like concrete shear walls and floors, steel columns and beams, and fire-rated glass. It is surrounded by a newly built fire road to allow easy firetruck access, and drought-resistant landscaping.

When Marmol Radziner started receiving calls from families who had lost their homes to the LA wildfires, they wanted to help. New homes needed to be built, and victims were overwhelmed. "Most people plan for years when building their own homes, but this tragedy thrust people into a situation they were not planning for," says Jared Levy, Senior Project Manager at the AD100 firm. "It made sense for us to develop a prefab solution."

The East Bay Regional Park District applauds Gov. Gavin Newsom's recent signing into law of Senate Bill 392, landmark legislation that strengthens conservation efforts and enhances climate resilience across the East Bay, as well as other areas throughout the state. SB 392, authored by state Sen. Tim Grayson, D-Concord, and passed unanimously by the state Legislature, establishes the East Bay Hills Conservation Program, empowering the East Bay Regional Park District (EBRPD) to better protect the ecological integrity of the East Bay hills while improving wildfire

Every time I visit my family near Yosemite, it's sad to see acres of dead trees from recent fires. In the U.S., the annual area burned by wildfires has more than doubled over the past 20 years. In addition to the lost carbon storage, wildfires cost lives, create harmful smoke pollution, and make it more expensive to insure and rebuild our communities.

The purpose was to look for ways to work together with federal engagement to have a more coordinated approach to wildfire preparation, risk, mitigation and resiliency,

if we're working together to get environmental clearance on critical projects, to get permitting, to make sure we're prioritizing the biggest-impact projects regionally, and we're doing it in advance of the time money may be available, whether it's next month or perhaps with the next Congress, one way or another, we're going to be at the front of the line, Liccardo said.