Prioritizing Wildfire Prevention and Safety in the West Valley

The CZU Lightning Complex fire that threatened Santa Clara County’s West Valley struck during the height of summer. But it was a chilly Friday in January 2022 when embers blown by high winds ignited the coastal mountains near Big Sur, forcing evacuations and closing Highway 1 for several days.

In California, fire season is no longer is a “season.” Indeed, it seems almost constant.

As we continue to experience larger and more damaging wildfires each year, we have to keep looking for opportunities to improve fire prevention year-round, and to give local communities the help they need to keep their homes, businesses and families safe.

This is particularly important in places like the West Valley, where many folks live in the Wildland Urban Interface (WUI) zone that extends from the scenic and rugged—and fire fuel rich—Santa Cruz Mountains to the cities and neighborhoods on our western flank.

I’m gratified that my Board colleagues agreed, unanimously supporting my proposal to expand the Santa Clara County Central Fire Protection District’s Pre-Fire Management and Wildfire Resilience program.

First, the County will be adding a dedicated crew, called a Fuels Crew, to clear brush and vegetation along evacuation routes and roads in the fire district, which includes the cities of Los Gatos, Monte Sereno, Cupertino, and a portion of Saratoga, along with unincorporated lands in western Santa Clara County. (As a “dependent” fire district, SCCCFPD is governed by the County Board of Supervisors, which acts as the district’s Board of Directors.)

In addition to reducing wildfire ignitions and spread along evacuation routes, we’ve also expanded a free “chipping” program that helps individual residents and communities create and maintain defensible space, and further reduces hazardous WUI fuels.

Offered in partnership with the Santa Clara County Fire Safe Council, the community chipping program currently offers free processing and disposal of brush and tree branches once a year at a central location. It’s a win all around, and I’m pleased we’ll be able to do more of it.

Other new prevention strategies approved by the Board include:

• A pilot Community Wildfire Program, with the addition of a specialist who will conduct inspections for residents living in high fire hazard areas, and provide guidance on creating defensible spaces around properties;
• Community education webinars for wildfire preparedness; and,
• An online data tool to run training simulations and to alert the public of evacuations with real-time information.

Our County’s existing Fire Protection and Wildfire Resilience Program was established with federal, state, and local partners in 2020, following two devastating megafires – the CZU and Santa Clara Unit (SCU) lightning complexes—that affected the South Bay.

The program's strong initial results are encouraging. Expanding this initiative will protect not only the communities we call home here in the County, but also the diverse wildlife and forests with which we coexist.

Residents of communities near or within WUIs understand all too well the devastating potential of wildfires: the CZU lightening complex destroyed nearly 1,500 homes and businesses in San Mateo and Santa Cruz counties, engulfed the ancient redwood trees of California’s oldest state park, and caused one fatality. Collateral damage from smoke can even affect communities hundreds of miles away, severely reducing air quality, causing health risks, and keeping people indoors for weeks at a time. 

As Assistant Fire Chief Brian Glass put it, “The region continues to experience increased risk due to an accumulation of drought stressed fuels and overgrowth. Wildland megafires are becoming more frequent and deadly and this is why it is so important that we take action, now, to explore additional ways to keep the communities we serve safe.”

I commend the Fire District’s efforts to date to focus on prevention and wildfire mitigation. It’s time for us to step up and take these efforts to the next level. We can and will do more. Frankly put, we have to.

Joe Simitian
Santa Clara County Board of Supervisors

This article was originally published in Los Gatos Living Magazine in June 2022.