Education, Engagement and Neighborhood Organizing

Build County wide capacity to cover all components of the resilience cycle: a) prevention, b) community preparedness, c) community organizing, d) short term relief, e) long term relief f) recovery and g) rebuilding and planning, in a way that reduces vulnerability. Identify and implement the best practices for resilience cycle action, understanding that we need to always be preparing for the next disaster.

Citizens and community leaders alike struggle to find timely, relevant and validated data during times of crisis. Despite the best efforts of agencies to coordinate communications to meet this need…

The Cachuma Resource Conservation District (CRCD) plays a critical role in our community as a partner to and bridge between farmers, ranchers and other landowners and conservation groups and agencies focused on the health of our land, water, soil, wildlife, agriculture and food systems.

Community Wildfire Protection Planning is a structured process that helps communities assess their preparedness for wildfires, identify priority actions and secure policy guidance from their elected leaders so that fire protection agencies…

Throughout California and the western United States, we are experiencing intense wildfires at previously unthinkable scales and with unprecedented loss of homes and communities.

Our current fire resilience infrastructure and strategies are built on a series of assumptions that may no longer hold true. We have interior fire sprinklers designed to suppress single home fires with a deluge of water…

Home hardening increases the likelihood that a home survives a wildfire, but hardened homes do not provide a safe place of refuge in the event that a fast moving wildfire cuts off evacuation routes and forces residents to shelter in place.

During the RPP teams outreach efforts we shared a worldwide literature search produced by partners for the community of Paradise after the devastating Camp fire. Local fire personnel suggested a collaborative effort among fire agencies, community based groups ….

Santa Barbara County Fire Department (SBCFD) serves as Santa Barbara County's Cal Fire Unit and regularly produces an Annual Strategic Unit Plan as mandated by Cal Fire that inventories the fire prevention projects SBCFD has in various stages of its planning and implementation processes.

The Los Padres National Forest (LPNF) undertook a planning effort to identify, prioritize and plan a series of fire prevention and mitigation activities to reduce the risk of wildfire to mountain communities including West Camino Cielo, Painted Cave and Rosario Park.

While several areas of Santa Barbara County benefit from the preparation of Community Wildfire Protection Plans, there are several areas of the County that do not currently have a plan that covers them.

Guadalupe City leaders noted that an area next to Leroy Park and adjacent to the Santa Maria River is considered a high fire risk to nearby vulnerable population concentrations.

Reducing combustible vegetation in the immediate vicinity of homes, other buildings, infrastructure and transit corridors is one of the most effective actions available for fire risk reduction in the county.