Frequently Asked Questions
SAFRR on State Fire Safe Regulations – November 2024
The State Alliance for Firesafe Road Regulations’ (SAFRR) mission is to ensure that all new development in California provides for unimpeded access by firefighting emergency equipment and safe concurrent evacuation, and complies with land use laws, fire codes and road safety standards, including the State Minimum Fire Safe Regulations.
Q. How do we access the Fire Hazard Severity Zone Maps?
A. The Office of State Fire Marshal updates the fire hazard severity zone maps based on robust data, which emphasizes recent fire history. The maps were completed for the State Responsibility Area (SRA) in 2024, and fire hazard severity maps for the Local Responsibility Area (LRA) were released and will become effective in 2025. Fire Hazard Severity Zones explained by CalFire.
Many local jurisdictions, such as the City of Los Angeles, (Fire Zone History) have adopted their own very high severity zone map (Fire Zone Maps) based on CA state law.
Q. Where do the State Minimum Fire Safe Regulations apply?
A. The State Fire Safe Road Regulations (FSRs) set by the Board of Forestry, as authorized under the Public Resource Code (PRC § 4290) have applied to the State Responsibility Area (SRA) since 1991, and since July 2021 apply to the Very High Fire Hazard Severity Zone (VHFHSZ) in the LRA (Local Responsibility Area) in each County/City.
Q. What is the Intent of the State Minimum Fire Safe Regulations (FSR)?
A. The road standards in the FSR intend to provide access by large firefighting apparatus along with safe concurrent evacuation of residents and workers, and to provide unobstructed traffic circulation during ongoing wildfire emergencies. The FSR are a state minimum - local jurisdictions can have stricter standards, but not looser standards.
Note: In the FSR, “Exemptions” refer to a complete exclusion from the rule. This is completely different from “Exceptions to Standards” a variation of the rule that has the “Same Practical Effect.”
Q. Do the FSR apply to both public and private roads to safely evacuate and allow emergency access?
A. Yes, both public and private roads are equally covered. If a private road does not meet the FSR criteria, the applicant can apply for an “Exception to Standards” and then make required infrastructure improvements (discussed below), or if a public road access does not meet the FSR, the applicant can explore what improvements would be required with the local Public Works authority. If public or private access roads cannot be improved to meet the FSR, then new development cannot occur.
Q. Are there “Exemptions” to the Fire Safe Regulations, where the FSR standards do not apply? And are there “Exceptions to Standards” in the FSR, where standards can be met through alternative means?
A. Yes, but these “Exemptions” are only for limited specific situations. These subjects are fully covered in: Local Jurisdiction Implementation Responsibilities FAQs
Roads are exempt if they are used solely for Agriculture, mining, or management of timberland or harvesting of forest products (§ 1270.04(d)). Note that a road used for agriculture, mining or timberland would not be exempt if there were also residences or visitor-serving facilities using the same road.
The other “pre-1991 parcel or tentative map” exemption was clarified in a 1993 Attorney General’s Opinion (§ 1270.03(b)) to have very little current applicability. Some counties improperly use this exemption for any residential construction on parcels accessed by pre-1991 roads. And, misuse of the exemption puts lives at risk.
Again, “Exceptions” are limited and must meet certain criteria. Exceptions must provide specific proposals that provide the “Same Practical Effect” as the FSR and only apply “within the development parcel”. All Exceptions must provide fire apparatus ingress and safe concurrent civilian evacuation. However, improvements within the parcel to meet the FSR do not determine compliance with the FSR for roads outside of the parcel, including safe evacuation.
If a public road does not meet FSR, the Exception process does not apply, as the access road is not “within the development parcel.” Rather, the applicant would need to coordinate with the local public works authority. If improvements are not agreed upon and implemented to meet the standards in the FSR (paid for either by the applicant or local jurisdiction), then new development cannot occur until the public road is improved to meet the FSR standards.
Q. Does the State have authority for oversight and enforcement?
A. Yes and No: CAL FIRE has the authority to inspect and enforce the FSR in the State Responsibility Area (SRA) (§ 1270.06(d)). For Very High Fire Hazard Severity Zones (VHFHSZ) in the Local Responsibility Area (LRA), local jurisdictions do the inspections; thus, no independent oversight mechanism is specified in the FSR for the LRA.
Q. Does the Governor understand that placing new development in high fire-prone areas does not solve the housing crisis?
A. Newsom’s stated policy on new development in wildfire-prone areas differs from his administration’s actions. In January 2022 Newsom said to the LA Times that he wants to shift home construction in California away from rural, wildfire-prone areas and toward urban areas. “This is a focus on moving away from the wildland-urban interface,” Newsom said, referring to moving development away from rural areas outside the periphery of most California cities and where fires routinely burn. “…moving away from investments in housing that don’t focus on climate, health, integrating downtown, schools, jobs, parks and restaurants. ” Source: January 13, 2022 LA Times
Q. What does the Insurance Commissioner say about the Fire Safe Regulations?
A. In a January 19, 2022 letter to the Board of Forestry and Fire Protection, California Insurance Commissioner Ricardo Lara argued for the importance of the fire-safe regulations, especially during climate-intensified wildfire risk. Lara convened the Climate Insurance Working Group pursuant to his SB 30 (Lara, Chapter 614, Statutes of 2018), which released a robust set of recommendations in a report named “California Climate Insurance.”
Q. Do we need revised regulations to clarify the Fire Safe Regulations?
A. No, we need to follow the regulations on the books. 2021-2023 attempts to revise or clarify fire safe regs resulted in significant efforts to gut the regulations that wasted time and effort by all concerned. Mandatory statewide training for implementation of the FSR would be highly beneficial to inform and address local jurisdictions that circumvent the plain language of the code.
Q. What does the California Environmental Quality Act (CEQA) require for safe evacuation?
A. The CEQA Initial Study Checklist requires that the lead agency consider adverse effects related to wildfire: i.e. under two sections: Section IX. Hazards and Hazardous Materials, would the project: (g) Expose people or structures, either directly or indirectly, to a significant risk of loss, injury or death involving wildland fires, including where wildlands are adjacent to urbanized areas or where residences are intermixed with wildlands? And, under Section XX. Wildfire, there are four checklist questions for lands in the SRA or Very High Fire Hazard Severity Zones related to adverse effects to emergency evacuation plans, projects that exacerbate fire risk, or expose people or structures to post-fire impacts. APPENDIX G ENVIRONMENTAL CHECKLIST FORM
The State Attorney General has successfully sued a local jurisdiction, Lake County, declaring it violated CEQA by failing to consider the effect on community safety and wildfire evacuation in a highly fire-prone area. Attorney General Bonta Secures Court Decision Vacating Approval of Lake County Development Project in Area That Has Burned Repeatedly | State of California - Department of Justice
Q. Can Shelter-in-Place be an alternative to providing adequate evacuation routes and planning, or even as a CEQA mitigation measure to allow development in fire-prone communities?
A. An emphatic No. The concept that Shelter-in-Place can substitute for safe evacuation is unsupported and unequivocally hazardous. People often die in fires from smoke and radiant heat, not just flames. Shelter-in-Place comes with high risks and fire professionals say it should always be a last resort. CAL FIRE’s “Ready Set Go Plan” reiterates multiple times that you should evacuate, not “Shelter-In-Place,” and has a section titled “If You Are Trapped – Survival Tips.” Shelter-in-Place takes significant numbers of personnel away from firefighting. Prolonged evacuations also delay essential fire suppression efforts. Further, there are no California building standards for Shelter-in-Place. And fire scientists who test structure hardening do not load up the house with a family before blasting the house with embers to test structure resiliency. The Office of the Attorney General prepared a report titled, Best Practices for Analyzing and Mitigating Wildfire Impacts of Development Projects Under the California Environmental Quality Act (CEQA). In addition to other guidance on approving development in fire hazard areas, the report states that Shelter-in-Place should not be relied upon in lieu of analyzing and mitigating a project’s evacuation impacts. (Office of AG Press Release 2022)
A 2021 study indicates that while compliance with current building codes and/or state fire mitigation measures may help homes survive a wildfire, that home survival rate may only be 40% higher than that of homes built to pre-2008 building code. Hence, perhaps 60% of newer homes will burn. And, regardless of the survival rate of the structure, the fact remains that the residents of all homes in the path of a wildfire will have to evacuate safely to survive. Press Release of AG Best Practices and Guidance to Local Governments .
Q. Do advanced and orderly wildfire evacuations solve the problem?
A. Fire professionals explain that often there is nothing “orderly” in wildfire evacuations – they are a time of chaos. Some local governments claim that their orderly phased evacuation plans “mitigate” the risks of approving unsafe new development in high fire-prone communities. Orderly phased evacuations are unquestionably constructive, however, advanced warning evacuations can take many hours or even days to implement.
In climate-intensified wind-driven fires we cannot rely upon “orderly” evacuations. An evacuation scenario is “dire” if the required time to clear an area of its population before hazard impact (actual evacuation time) is greater than the time available (evacuation lead time) (Cova et al, 2021). For example, in the 2018 Camp Fire in Paradise, the evacuation “lead time” was only 1.5 hours, the well-planned city evacuation plan was thwarted when intended exits were blocked, and the result was community burn over and significant loss of lives. Dire evacuation scenarios are becoming more common as drought leads to larger, faster-moving wildfires. A, and adding more development will exacerbate these scenarios, especially in areas with substandard roads and poor egress in high fire-prone areas. (See Cova, et al. Toward Stimulating Wildfire Scenarios, American Society of Civil Engineers, 2021)