Wildfire Hazard Zones Expand Dramatically in California
4/4/2025 | 2mVideo has Closed Captions
New state maps show wildfire risk zones have expanded dramatically across California.
Cal Fire has released new wildfire hazard maps showing more homes are now in high-risk zones than ever before. With improved modeling and climate change fueling fire conditions, residents face new building standards and safety requirements.
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SoCal Matters is a local public television program presented by PBS SoCal
Wildfire Hazard Zones Expand Dramatically in California
4/4/2025 | 2mVideo has Closed Captions
Cal Fire has released new wildfire hazard maps showing more homes are now in high-risk zones than ever before. With improved modeling and climate change fueling fire conditions, residents face new building standards and safety requirements.
Problems with Closed Captions? Closed Captioning Feedback
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Learn Moreabout PBS online sponsorshipCal Fire is showing just how much of the state is prone to wildfire and how much of that danger zone has grown since the state issued the last round of local hazard maps more than a decade ago.
Cal Fire has been releasing these maps in installments since February.
They applied to the cities and towns where local fire departments are responsible for managing wildfire.
The last and final installment covering all of Southern California came out at the end of March.
Why have the hazard areas exploded across California?
Three reasons.
The first is climate change.
A warming planet makes fuel drier and fire weather more severe.
The second is technological.
New modeling methods have allowed Cal Fire's in-house data experts to more precisely estimate where hazard is highest.
The third is legal.
State legislation in 2021 required the department to draw up new maps showing very high, high, and moderate hazard areas.
The prior versions only included very high.
What do these maps mean?
New homes in high-severity hazard areas have to build to heightened fire-resistant building standards.
Home sales have to include hazard disclosure forms, and anyone living in the very high severity hazard areas will be required to keep 100 feet of brush-free defensible space around their homes.
Under the old maps, only a fifth of the properties inside the Eaton fire scar in Altadena were deemed very high hazard.
The new ones show more red and orange encroaching into the city State Fire Marshal Daniel Berlant said the hazard maps are meant to predict the likelihood of wildfire, not house-to-house urban conflagrations like the ones we saw burn through Los Angeles in January.
That kind of disaster would require a model that takes into account more than natural topography, weather, and vegetation.
It would also need to look at just how closely buildings are packed together, a leading predictor of whether a home burns in these fires.
For CalMatters, I'm Ben Christopher.
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SoCal Matters is a local public television program presented by PBS SoCal