Fire Aside

"We know what we should be doing, in fact the whole state knows what we should be doing, but we haven't been able to do it yet. Let's get this done."  – Colin Arnold, Assistant Chief Berkeley is taking bold steps to strengthen wildfire resilience with the EMBER initiative—tightening fire defense measures, creating a new high-risk zone, and finally enforcing ember-resistant zones around homes. Berkeley City Council is holding a work session on Feb. 11 to discuss the EMBER proposal. 🔗 Read more: https://lnkd.in/ebPAmC7X #WildfireResilience #DisasterPreparedness #BerkeleyFire #EMBER

🔥 Live Webinar: Reflecting on the LA fires and what it means for Bay Area fire prevention🔥 On Thursday, January 23rd, Stanford University's Bill Lane Center for the American West will be hosting a panel discussion, with top wildfire experts about lessons from recent LA fires and how the Bay Area can better prepare for future wildfire events. Panelists: David Shew, Fire Administrator, Napa County Mark Brown, Executive Officer, Marin Wildfire Prevention Authority Michael Wara, Director, Climate & Energy Policy Program, Stanford University Moderator: Derek Fong , Lecturer and Senior Research Engineer, Stanford University The panelists bring decades of experience and reflections on what the Bay Area can do about the inevitability of wildfires in the coming years. 🔗 Free and open to all. Register required: https://lnkd.in/e4d5DrB9

As wildfires devastate Southern California, Berkeley firefighters have joined over 90 from Alameda County to support the fight. In The Berkeley Scanner, Chief Dave Sprague reflects on the shared grief and the critical lessons these fires bring to communities like ours—highlighting the importance of early evacuation plans, defensible space, and home hardening. https://lnkd.in/eN5WCXTR

There has been a ton of talk this week about the next big disruptor in technology to end catastrophic wildfire. If you can't look at this picture and see the problem then I am advising you to take an S-190 introduction to wildfire behavior course online and immerse yourself in the problem at hand. We have a community wildfire problem that involves the private property owners. We can't suppress our way out of this. The solutions to help mitigate this problem are well known but they aren't flashy. They involve you "DIY" or hiring landscapers and contractors to help make your home fire resilient. You can learn more here. https://lnkd.in/giy8dKqN #palisadesfire #eatonfire #wildfire #leftofbang

The 7th Oregon Climate Asssessment was published on Wednesday, and my contribution entitled Reimagining the Wildfire Challenge and Local Solutions is attached. The Oregon Climate Research Institute asked me to highlight 10 key takeaways and reflections from working with firefighters, fire survivors, scientists and the public. In the piece, I reflect on the communications opportunities and challenges from being on the road with Elemental: Reimagine Wildfire for nearly 3 years, and interacting with audiences at hundreds of screenings. While we know what we need to do, a core challenges is how we help people learn what they can do and take action to become fire safe people across the land. An excerpt containing the Executive Summary, Table of Contents and my piece is posted below. The Full Report is here: https://lnkd.in/gy2Y3ZAF Story on Fox News here: https://lnkd.in/gsJXtPvw Thanks to Oregon State University's Erica Fleishman for inviting me to write this and for her most helpful peer reviews over many months of pulling this together.

We present our Chipper Day Wrapped- inspired by Spotify Wrapped! We are proud to have such an efficient and reliable program that can motivate residents to prepare for wildfire. ✔️ As a community, Marin cleared enough hazardous vegetation to fill 3,456 20 ft pickup trucks. Bumper to bumper, this would stretch over 13 miles! ✔️ The program used large trucks that follow optimized routes which means less trucks on the streets and a reduction in CO2 emissions. ✔️ Marin residents dedicated 29,835 hours to clearing hazardous vegetation. That's over 1,243 full days of work. ✔️ The average pile size per resident was 3 cubic yard. That's about the size of a hot tub. Thanks Marin residents for making 2024 a success! #MarinCounty #MarinWildfire #ChipperDay