Homeowners in Laguna Beach urged to do their part to stave off wildfire disaster

Laguna Beach has rolled out a robust list of recommendations for its continued efforts in shoring up the community against the threat of wildfires and one key component is property owner participation.

The city introduced a wildfire mitigation and fire safety report in 2019. Two dozen items have been completed stemming from the initial report, city officials said, while another 67 recommendations were submitted in the update.

In the wake of the wildfires that ravaged the Los Angeles area in January, Laguna Beach revived its wildfire mitigation and fire safety ad hoc committee. The City Council appointed council members Sue Kempf and Bob Whalen as its representatives.

During the May 6 meeting of the City Council, city officials and community members called on residents to do their part to mitigate fire risk at home and to be prepared in the event that disaster strikes.

Sarah Limones, the city’s new emergency operations coordinator, said the action items included in the update were broken up into several categories. The focal points for improvements include alert and warning capabilities, community preparedness, evacuation planning, fuel modification, infrastructure and public safety technology.

“I think there’s really several components to it,” Whalen said of wildfire preparations. “The first is … continued public agency effort … on the part of the city, on the part of the water districts, on the part of our surrounding agencies that have been assisting us. …I think the one we really have to stress, and it was not really that prevalent in the 2019 report, is private homeowner effort. … It really comes down to home hardening and vegetation management on our private property, and it’s a big undertaking. It’s a big effort. It’s not going to be fun, in a lot of cases.”

City officials want to create a list of residents with mobility challenges that may need additional assistance on red flag days or in the event of an evacuation. Kempf said there will be a door-to-door campaign to get people signed up for the Nixle alert system, and she stressed the importance of taking heed to evacuation warnings.

Limones said the city would like to continue community engagement through town hall meetings. She suggested an annual meeting on the topic of insurance. Residents were also urged to have emergency kits ready and to practice leaving their neighborhoods via at least two separate routes.

There was also discussion about staging heavy equipment, such as bulldozers, on red flag days in areas with tough ingress and egress, in case abandoned cars need to be moved along evacuation routes and for public safety personnel. A video was shown during the meeting to demonstrate what it is like to maneuver a fire apparatus on the narrow streets of some neighborhoods in town.

From a technology standpoint, the city has begun implementing artificial intelligence fire detection cameras. Fire Chief Niko King said there are a couple cameras already installed at Top of the World and along Laguna Canyon Road, and there are plans to identify more locations. The city is exploring ways to control traffic without tying up public safety personnel, too.

The cameras operate 24/27 and detect any ignitions, King said. They can automatically report them to the nearest dispatch center to get early-notification resources started.

“We’re looking at traffic systems and installing some of the priority signals,” he added. “In the event of an evacuation, these signals … stay green and they allow traffic to continue its flow in a specific direction.”

Other preventive measures include consideration of the expansion of some fuel modification zones.

“Probably within the last six or seven years, we’re starting to see some of the technology applied after fires occur,” King said. “With the AI, they’re able to model these fires and look where the … energy was the strongest.’

The fire chief said that where there’s continuous fuel, such as dry brush on a steep slope near a populated area that’s subject to high winds, some of the energy can be taken out of a blaze and the amount of flying ember showers will be decreased if the fuel modification zone is expanded to 300 feet from a property.

The local water districts also want to be resilient against seismic events and wildfire, both from the perspective of infrastructure and water supply.

Keith Van Der Maaten, general manager of Laguna Beach County Water District, said his team is working with Newport Beach and Fountain Valley to get a new well and working with South Coast Water District on the Doheny desalination project. “Those those two projects alone will allow us to be 100% local supply,” he said.

“Helo-hydrant is another infrastructure,” he continued. “There’s two of them now — one that the city funded, one that the district funded, and we are going to be looking at next year … a study to see if we can identify a third site.”

Undergrounding utility lines remains a major focus in the community’s fire mitigation efforts.

City Manager Dave Kiff said the bottom line on the action items outlined in the plan will amount to “tens of millions of dollars.”

Mayor Alex Rounaghi said the city has to be “all-in on fire safety,” and inquired about the possibility of putting 10% of the city’s general fund budget, which this year is $94.6 million, toward such measures.

“I think we should be putting the next 10 years 10% of our general fund into wildfire prevention,” Rounaghi said. “I think when you look at the public safety needs that we have in this community, we have to take this seriously. That’s where I’m at. I think we need to really do more than $4 million this next budget. I think we need to be closer to 10% of our budget and also be looking at revenue enhancements.”