Climate Change Impacts Public Safety

Climate Change: SAFRR is proactive in its work to make communities more resilient as hotter weather - compounded by high winds – is resulting in devastation from wildfire, ember cast and structure to structure ignitions.

Graph showing millions of acres burned by wildfires from 1985 to 2015, with a higher increase in wildfires with climate change compared to wildfires without climate change, highlighting the impact of climate change on wildfire fires.

Figure - 013: Wildfires and Climate Change: California’s Energy Future: A Report from Governor Newsom’s Strike Force April 12, 2019

SAFRR recommends that local emergency plans utilize fire behavior modeling.

A paper by Carol Rice titled Clarify Evacuation Options through Fire Behavior and Traffic Modeling outlines the mutual benefits of these studies.

PERIL Modeling Framework - A fire behavior study models the wind and other factors that impact the advance of wildfire through various terrains. Then, it defines scenarios from typical wind to enhanced-wind conditions, contrasting scenarios of expected wildfire speed to determine the time it may take for the community and/or evacuation routes to burn over, as compared to the speed of evacuation traffic and expected time to reach a safe zone. 

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