Policy and Planning

This project opportunity matrix and the RPP site are valuable community assets, but the information herein represents a snapshot of needs at this point in time and is not exhaustive. Building wildfire resilience in Santa Barbara County needs to be an ongoing proactive process. As identified projects are implemented, new needs and opportunities will emerge on an ongoing basis and need to be added to the Opportunity Matrix. The RPP team recommends a focused effort to create a Collaborative Resourcing Team that includes representatives from multiple agencies, nonprofits and funders to further develop these key pieces of our resilience system and then to maintain and put them to use.

Create a regularly occurring opportunity for cross sector sharing learnings and collaborating on potential policy, actions and projects.

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.

Develop a replicable framework for creating a fire-safe landscape with healthy ecological function in post-fire recovery areas …

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.

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.

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.

A key SBC Fire Department leader shared that Santa Barbara County needs to increase the pace and scale of fine scale mapping of built and natural resources to facilitate effective planning and avoid unnecessary conflicts.