BY ANDREW PHELPS
Los Alamos
What I would like to hear at the upcoming Wednesday town hall meeting is ways Los Alamos County is working to minimize fire risk in community, state, and federal property. There are many excellent studies that present the benefits of such efforts. We need more fire breaks in the west and south west approaches to our community. We need fire breaks in our canyons. We need free pickup of brush and incentives for residents to reduce fuel loads, we need to have a process to address abandoned properties – like the one next to us (abandoned for 25+ years). Example of one noted study is below. The county should be all in helping residents with their policies keep their fire insurance and help reduce their fire insurance costs. The proposed ordinance is ok – but it places the majority of responsibility on home owner and is not touted as a partnership with the county taking significant actions.
The report, which was supported by a grant from the Bay Area Council Foundation’s California Resilience Challenge, highlighted several steps communities in the WUI can take to reduce risk and become safer places to live, work, and play:
- Mitigation actions by individual homeowners, such as keeping vegetation at least five feet away from structures (estimated to reduce losses up to 52.9%).
- Wildfire Informed Development Patterns, such as focusing on rebuilding in areas with lower wildfire risk (e.g. a downtown core) and being intentional with land use planning (e.g. using well-maintained internal buffers such as parks) within urban areas (estimated to reduce losses up to 14.5% per property).
- External buffers, such as well-maintained areas with low fire spread potential (estimated to reduce losses by up to 34.5%).
- When combined and implemented to maximum potential, the above three strategies were found to reduce projected losses in the Town of Paradise by an average 75% per structure, which translates to an average 55% reduction in reduction.
Happy to discuss.
Andy Phelps