State Alliance for Firesafe Road Regulations

Our Mission

The mission of the State Alliance for Firesafe Road Regulations (SAFRR) is to ensure that new California development fully complies with land use laws, fire codes and road safety standards, including the State’s Minimum Fire Safe Regulations, which are designed to save lives by providing for civilian evacuations while ensuring unimpeded access by large firefighting and emergency equipment.

State Minimum Fire Safe Regulations

Preservation of the protective standards in the 1991 State Minimum Fire Safe Regulations is the reason SAFRR was founded.

From 2021 to 2023, SAFRR successfully countered lobbying efforts designed to weaken the firesafe standards. Working with the Board of Forestry and Fire Protection (BOF), a division of the California Natural Resources Agency, SAFRR prepared legal submissions, led public engagement, fostered a network of bold retired fire professionals and built statewide coalitions to protect life-saving standards.

David Hillman, retired Deputy Director CalFire:
“I find it absurd that we are throwing tens of millions of dollars at our fire suppression capabilities but [considering] removing some of the safety and fire protection regulations that were developed in response to previous catastrophic and tragic events —regulations that remove long-standing safety standards in high fire danger areas, will likely risk firefighter and civilian lives.”

SAFRR built coalitions who fought and won - preserving the protective elements of the regulations. The Board of Forestry ultimately set aside detrimental proposals in August 2022, and adopted an updated set of State Minimum Fire Safe Regulations (FSR) were released in April, 2023.

Three criteria guide the intent of the Fire Safe Regulation standards:

  • unimpeded access by large firefighting apparatus;

  • concurrent evacuation of residents and workers; and

  • unobstructed traffic circulation during ongoing wildfire emergencies.

SAFRR provides: a history of the FSR; how fire professionals weighed-in to preserve the standards; April 2023 updated FSR; and standards pursuant to State Attorney General. Also, we define when FSR standards apply to the State Responsibility Area (SRA) versus Local Responsibility Area (LRA); 2025 updates to the Fire Hazard Severity Zone Maps; and other codes and standards (e.g. building code Chapter 7A) that apply to the SRA and the High and Very High Fire Hazard Severity Zones of the LRA.

NOTE: BB remove picture below - it offends out fire professionals (see new Pic recommendation

Action Alerts

SAFRR continually monitors local and state policies, ordinances, legislation and court cases.

Action Alerts keep the website up to date by providing timely and relevant excerpts, with links and additional text for people who want to learn more.

In addition to Action Alerts, the Resources section is continually updated, with links to technical studies, articles, and reports.

Resources

SAFRR’s RESOURCES section is a set of information covering four categories of interrelated and interconnected research, articles and studies:
1) Wildfire Science,
2) Development Challenges – both New and Existing,
3) Evacuation Research, and
4) Public Health and Safety.

Additional detail on subjects covered in the Resources Section is provided at the end of this home page.

Local Advocacy

The standards set in the Fire Safe Regulations are a state minimum—local jurisdictions can write ordinances with stricter standards but not lesser standards. 

Given that established communities and new developments rely on existing access roads, when local jurisdictions exempt public roads from minimum standards, evacuation bottlenecks are inevitable, and lives will be lost.

SAFRR recognizes the escalating impacts of climate driven wildfires and ember storms, and advocates for sound land use policies that are protective of both first responder and public safety. Our advocacy in local jurisdictions spans three interconnected categories and we often face challenges where public safety, climate change, and land use decisions intersect.

  • Climate Change - alert systems and fire behavior modeling research

  • Land Use Decisions – advocate, fund studies, and challenge in court

  • Public Safety - emergency planning and emergency traffic evacuation analyses

State Advocacy

In addition to preserving the Fire Safe Regulations, SAFRR was formed to address fire-related state legislation. SAFRR actively supports legislation and regulations that promote and provide for safe evacuation and protect public safety. SAFRR, and our coalition partners, fully participate in the legislative process.

SAFRR provides a Case Study of the state-wide opposition to SB 610, remarkably successful given the coalitions’ had less than a month before the legislative recess. SB 610, using a gut-and-amend legislative process, would have reshaped California fire policy without adequate hearings or stakeholder engagement.

SAFRR was part of a coalition of over 100 organizations and multiple local jurisdictions that successfully opposed and stopped State Bill (SB 610 Senator Weiner, San Francisco).

SB 610 was suspended in 2024 - for good reason:

  • The legislation would have abolished the decades-old State Fire Hazard Severity Zone Maps.

  • Staff analysis for the Assembly Committee on Natural Resources identified over 50 unique statutory code sections referencing Fire Hazard Severity Zones (FHSZ) – all would be dispatched at great public cost by this ill-conceived bill.

  • The bill conflicted with the recommendations from the Governor’s Strike Force and the California Department of Insurance’s Climate Insurance Working Group.

  • And, it would have stripped city and county authority to define fire hazard zones based on jurisdiction-specific scientific information.

    NOTE: BB PUT PICTURE HERE: IMAGE-OaklandFireTruckJamb - 10 (thumbnail sent)

Addendum: Additional information on SAFRR’s Resource Section