Scoping risk of wildfire in San Mateo County

“They come up with excuses. If they would have said, ‘this is a fire hazard, you have to improve this or that’, I could see it, but an 11-year-old roof is too old? That’s a lame excuse,” said Irena, who didn’t want to give her last name. “It’s very fire resistant. If I would have had a shingle roof, I could see that, but there is no logical explanation.”

Her new insurance plan is out of state and costs more than $8,000 a year, a three-fold increase from her previous plan and with a requirement to pay up front. 

“It’s downtown Redwood City, so there is no wildfire hazard,” she said. “We get our property inspected, they come and check that your electrical system is up to snuff, there are no dead shrubs or overhanging trees. That always gets checked.”

The state’s volatile insurance market has worsened over the last couple of years. With hefty payouts from major wildfires over the last several years, coupled with caps on premium increases, many companies have left the state altogether or refused to write policies, even in areas that are not considered high risk.

Rising concern

Since the recent fires in Los Angeles County — likely to be one of the costliest the state has seen — more Peninsula residents are not just concerned about the yet-to-worsen coverage crisis but also the vulnerability of their own homes. South San Francisco Fire Chief Matt Samson said the city has seen a spike in calls related to home hardening tips — or ways to make houses more fire resistant— or defensible space, which focuses on mitigating risk in the surrounding area of one’s home. 

Much of San Mateo County’s single-family housing stock was built in the 1940s and 1950s, often consisting of wood siding, single-pane windows and other construction design standards deemed high-risk by today’s standards. And according to the California Department of Forestry and Fire Protection’s local fire hazard severity zone maps, several cities in the county are part of the highest hazard designation, including parts of San Mateo, Belmont, Half Moon Bay, Redwood City and Woodside. Much of the neighborhoods west of Alameda de las Pulgas is a wildfire risk, Robert Marshall, deputy fire chief at San Mateo Consolidated Fire Department, said.

Insurance as regulator

But despite increasingly destructive wildfires, there have been hardly any updates to the local fire hazard severity maps. The last update was made more than 12 years ago and only highlights neighborhoods that are in the “very high” hazard area, the highest designation. While the new map is expected to be published soon, Samson said the release date has been consistently pushed back for years.  

That’s made proactive investments and policies at the local level more difficult, given a lack of granular detail on their communities’ wildfire risk and in some cases, an ability to conduct their own research. It’s also made the insurance market, in some respects, the de facto regulator. 

Much of the most advanced risk assessment technology has been generated largely from the private insurance sector, Samson said. 

“With a void of leadership and messaging, a lot of private solutions come in,” he said. 

There is plenty of snake oil to watch out for, Samson added, but some of the solutions close critical information gaps. One of the industry standards on fire mitigation comes from the Insurance Institute for Business and Home Safety, the research arm of the insurance industry.

But without state standardization, insurance maps also create confusion for both brokers and policyholders, given the assessments vary greatly between companies. 

“Each insurance company is different. The commissioner has told them they don’t have to subscribe to the same map. One may use a map that doesn’t show that wildfire site, and the other insurance company doesn’t,” said one county-based insurance broker, who preferred to remain anonymous. “There is no consistency.” 

Realtors throughout the county have also updated their own practices and typically advise buyers to get multiple insurance quotes before putting in an offer. 

Denise Enea, executive director of Fire Safe San Mateo County, said jurisdictions could, and should, shore up their prevention efforts by going above and beyond Chapter 7a, which is the part of the California Building Code that dictates construction standards in higher risk areas.

“I don’t know of many cities that have adopted really stringent building codes. In San Mateo County, you can still put on a wood shake roof [under certain conditions], but it’s still combustible,” Enea said. “That’s why I hoped building codes would become a lot more stringent, so people wouldn’t have to go through getting a letter from insurance saying you have to replace your roof.”

For instance, Chapter 7a still allows for some wood siding under certain conditions, but cities could prohibit siding on the ground floor altogether, only permitting it for the second floor and above, she said. 

“It’s a lot of work for planning departments … but it’s well worth it for their community. We’ve gone through a significant building boom in the last few years, and it would’ve been great if our buildings were built with stronger ignition-resistant building codes,” Enea said.  

Funding challenges, more density

Some places like Saratoga and Woodside offer cost-sharing programs to help with home hardening programs, with funds going toward roof updates in some cases, though larger cities would likely find it more difficult to take on such costs. 

Marshall said the fire department has made efforts beyond statewide standards. Rather than relying on old maps, they hired a consultant several years back to generate their own detailed risk map using more up-to-date methodologies and have implemented 7a regulations not just for the “very high” severity homes but for those designated as “high” as well. 

But similar to wildfire risk data, funding is disparate. Fire preparedness and mitigation efforts, whether it’s for home hardening or vegetation management, rely heavily on grants, and though the county has been able to secure a number of them, it’s not an efficient way to ensure critical projects are completed adequately and in a timely manner, Enea said. Relying on competitive grants to fund projects means that an exorbitant amount of time and money is spent on administrative and bureaucratic duties, such as submitting extensive grant applications and conducting time-consuming environmental reviews for every single project.

Jurisdictions are also simultaneously under immense pressure to increase housing production to meet state-mandated goals, with many loosening density restrictions to do so. But it’s not always conducive to more fire-prone areas, especially in neighborhoods with older homes, Enea said. 

“I understand the goal is more housing … but if your [accessory dwelling unit] catches on fire and it’s 4 to 5 feet from your residence and you have glass that is not ignition resistant, then your house is gone,” she said. 

New zones, ember awareness

Marshall said many residents are showing heightened interest in home hardening and defensibility tips since the Southern California fires, but they may also find themselves on the state’s new local severity maps it intends to publish soon, further piquing residents’ interest in fire mitigation efforts in the near future. New technology and research methodologies could actually result in many homes’ severity levels lowering from the current “very high” or “high” categories, he added. But per new state regulation, moderate zones will also be outlined for the first time on the maps. Homeowners in those zones won’t need to adhere to the stricter Chapter 7a requirements, but that doesn’t mean they shouldn’t take home hardening and defensibility initiatives seriously. 

“During the Paradise, Camp and Tubbs fire … the moderate and high severity zones had just as much destruction,  so when the Legislature changed the law about the maps, they also changed what the state would tell us about the maps, and they required that they give jurisdictions both high and moderate zones,” Marshall said. 

A big part of how wildfires spread, especially in residential areas, is due to ember casts, which are often responsible for homes catching fire. Marshall said the agency tries to educate owners on the types of vegetation that throw a lot of embers during fires, like Italian cypress. It also underscores not just the importance of ember-resistant infrastructure, like vents, but also maintaining or removing non-native trees, as native vegetation, like oak trees, are more resistant. 

In 2020, South City’s Sign Hill caught on fire, prompting more vegetation management, which included the removal of eucalyptus trees, which are particularly flammable, in addition to palm trees. 

“We want to return it to a more natural state so when fire returns, we wouldn’t have an extreme fire,” Samson said. 

Despite the known risks, eucalyptus and palm trees have a significant presence in many residential neighborhoods throughout the state. In Pacific Palisades, footage of the burning trees and their destructive debris was rampant. 

Oil from eucalyptus leaves, which is also responsible for its signature scent, increases the trees’ flammability, not to mention the thin strips of bark which tend to shed and get stuck in the tree or fall to the ground, creating the perfect breeding ground for embers. 

But Marshall said there aren’t any plans to remove them in neighborhoods, even where they line the streets. 

“If you maintain them properly, and you take all the litter on the ground, get all the leaves, make sure no shrubs are close to them, take care of the bark problem, and make sure the trees are healthy, as well as cutting it away from power lines … the tree is no longer a fire hazard,” Marshall said.

Irena said she hopes there is more focus on corporations like Pacific Gas and Electric. The utility has an easement in Redwood City, which she said it has only recently started to maintain.  

“For me, it’s not understandable that PG&E is allowed to have power lines above ground in this area … which is really fire-prone,” she said. “My home is facing a PG&E easement, and they never took care of it, so grass and shrubs were growing uncontrollably. If a power line comes down, it would burn immediately.”

The utility giant was found liable for some of the worst Northern California fires, including the Kincade and Dixie fires. The latter burned almost 1 million acres and was the largest single-source wildfire in the state’s history. 

Enea said resiliency at a county-level is difficult but not impossible. 

“It’s tough, it’s multifaceted, and that’s been the hardest thing to educate residents about,” she said.