Cal Fire records show that since 2021, state officials have repeatedly denied funding for wildfire prevention efforts in areas affected by the Palisades Fire, and have instead given funding to remote rural areas. It is shown that he is pouring money into the department’s projects.
Over the past four years, Cal Fire has chosen not to fund more than $3.8 million in wildfire prevention grants to communities in the Santa Monica Mountains, including the Pacific Palisades and Malibu, according to records reviewed by the Times.
Meanwhile, many other projects in areas sometimes determined by the state to have low wildfire risk received most or all of the amount requested, and in some cases more. Amounts, often amounting to millions of dollars, were allocated to various projects and tasks, such as goat brush cleaning and distributing information mailers.
Some of the funding decisions were announced less than six months after the Palisades Fire broke out last week, ravaging more than 23,000 acres of communities in and near the Santa Monica Mountains. Cal Fire awarded $90.8 million worth of grants through this program last fiscal year.
A Cal Fire spokesperson said that since fiscal year 2020-21, a total of $17.8 million has been awarded to 33 wildfire prevention projects in Los Angeles County, with approximately 125 acres of land within eight miles of the Palisades Fire cleared of brush. He said that it had been “processed”. Fuel reduction efforts over the past four years.
Andrew Henning, Cal Fire’s deputy director for community wildfire support and fire technology and research, said grant applications are reviewed at the local, regional and statewide levels before decisions are made.
“Each level is focused on projects and activities that address hazards that reduce the potential risk from wildfires within and near the region,” he said in an email.
Mr. Henning said the initiatives the agency chose not to fund were either redundant or too expensive. But representatives of the organizations seeking the funds disagreed, arguing that the grants could have prevented the fires and lessened the damage.
In August, Cal Fire denied nearly $3 million to seven communities in the Santa Monica Mountains that were hit hard by the Palisades Fire, including Big Rock and Topanga Canyon in eastern Malibu. The money would go toward “pioneering partnerships that help bridge the gap between professional first responders and local communities during major disasters,” according to state records. The goal was to create “more wildfire and risk-adapted communities.”
Brent Woodworth, president and CEO of the Los Angeles Emergency Preparedness Foundation, the nonprofit that applied for the grant, said he plans to use the money to conduct what’s called a Home Ignition Zone Assessment. . The organization provides free, detailed assessments that identify specific steps homeowners can take to reduce the risk of a devastating fire.
The foundation has conducted hundreds of investigations using about $133,000 it received from previous Cal Fire grants, he said.
“The value of a fire home inspection is incredible because even in this particular case, not only did we inspect it, but the homeowner actually took mitigation steps and the homeowner was able to take the mitigation measures that were involved in this fire, the Palisades Fire. “I know many homes that have survived,” Woodworth said.
Henning said Cal Fire is concerned about the “high cost” of the foundation’s proposal.
Helen Poulos, a professor of environmental and geosciences at Wesleyan University, said hardening housing is the only thing residents and communities have to reduce the risk of catastrophic wildfires in cities and urban areas burned by the Palisades Fire. He said it was the most effective method. The university was not involved in Cal Fire grant decisions.
She said assessments like the one provided by Woodworth’s group are important because homeowners who follow the recommendations can reduce the spread of fires in densely populated areas.
“It’s very simple: When you talk about the wildland-urban interface, cutting funding means increasing the risk to the community,” said the graduate, who grew up in Southern California and earned a bachelor’s degree from Pepperdine University in Malibu. said Ploss, who has studied wildfires for decades.
“It’s much easier to maintain the status quo than to build communities that are resilient to these fire climates,” she added. “Doing nothing is a business decision.”
Some projects in the Los Angeles area only receive partial funding from Cal Fire. In August, the agency awarded about half of the more than $1.6 million in grants requested by the Santa Monica Mountains Fire Safety Council for fire protection efforts in Pacific Palisades, Malibu and other communities in the region.
Pauline Allen, the group’s executive director, said the funding would go toward implementing bushfire recovery plans and carrying out home ignition zone assessments.
She said authorities told her that the “overall budget for education and prevention grants was lower than expected” and that the budget “specific to preventive education” had been cut.
Almost six months later, the organization is still waiting for the grants to start flowing.
“I hope the money comes in sooner,” Allen said. “It’s a very slow process.”
Henning said Cal Fire declined to grant some of the funding requested by the City Council because the original proposal “included ‘housing hardening’ funded through the Alternative Grant Program.” Ta.
Meanwhile, in August, Cal Fire awarded Shasta Valley Resource Conservation District $86,000 more than the $1.7 million it had requested for “mechanical tree removal” on 682 acres outside Yreka. Gave. The population of the area near Mount Shasta is less than 8,000, but the area around it has experienced major fires in recent years.
As part of the same grant program, state officials in August awarded Mariposa County (population: about 20,000 people) nearly $300,000, more than the $1.78 million it requested for vegetation management along county-maintained roads.
Cal Fire also in August paid $47,000 more than the Kern Fire Protection Council had requested for a project to clear dirt roads and do other work in Hart Flat, a small rural community in Kern County. The award amounted to $538,000, nearly $500,000 more.
Last fiscal year, the state refused to provide $1.5 million to Los Angeles County to remove insect-infested trees that pose a “fire risk” in large areas of the county, including the Santa Monica Mountains. did. Henning said the area where the proposed work would be done “has already been determined to be an active treatment area through previously awarded grants.”
That fiscal year, Cal Fire donated more than $527,000 to the University of California, Santa Cruz “each year for goat grazing in very rugged areas and mowing in other areas.”
In the past few years, Cal Fire has funded at least one project aimed at strengthening wildfire prevention in areas freshly burned by the Palisades Fire, and in 2021, near the Santa Monica Mountains National Recreation Area. has provided nearly $390,000 in funding “to improve homeowners’ management of defensible space” in real estate. .
But the state has often funded fire prevention efforts in less dangerous areas than the Pacific Palisades.
Cal Fire announced in August that it would award the city of Escondido nearly $250,000 to distribute fire mailers to 20,200 lots within state-designated “high fire hazard areas.”
That same month, Allen’s Santa Monica Mountains Fire Protection Council sought to provide service to an area described in its grant application as being nearly 98% within “extremely high fire risk areas.” Only half of the more than $1.6 million that had been awarded was granted. ”
When asked if fewer homes might have burned down in the Palisades fire if they had received the full amount immediately, Allen said: But I think there were a lot of risks in the Santa Monica Mountains. ”
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