Fires raging in parts of Los Angeles, rural areas receive millions in state fire protection funds

Cal Fire records show that since 2021, the state has repeatedly refused to fund wildfire prevention efforts in communities devastated by the Palisades Fire, with the agency instead funneling money into projects in remote rural areas.

Records reviewed by The Times show Cal Fire decided not to award more than $3.8 million in wildfire prevention grants to Santa Monica mountain communities including Pacific Palisades and Malibu over the past four years.

Meanwhile, many other projects located in areas that the state sometimes considers to be low wildfire risk received most or all of the amount they requested, and in some cases even more. The funds, which often amount to millions of dollars, are allocated for a range of projects and tasks, including clearing goat brush and distributing informational mailers.

Several of the funding decisions were announced less than half a year before last week's Palisades Fire, which ravaged more than 23,000 acres in and around communities in the Santa Monica Mountains. Cal Fire awarded $90.8 million worth of grants through the program last fiscal year.

A Cal Fire spokesperson said that since the 2020-21 fiscal year, it has allocated $17.8 million to 33 wildfire prevention projects in Los Angeles County to conduct brush clearance and other measures on nearly 125 acres within 5 miles of the Palisades Fire. “processing”. Fuel reduction efforts over the past four years.

Grant applications are reviewed at the local, regional and statewide levels before a decision is made, said Andrew Henning, Cal Fire's assistant deputy director for community wildfire assistance, fire protection engineering and investigation.

“Each level focuses on projects and activities that address hazards to reduce the potential risk of wildfires in and near communities,” he said via email.

Henning said the initiatives the agency chose not to fund were redundant or overpriced. But representatives of the organizations seeking the funding disagreed, arguing the grants could help prevent homes from burning down and mitigate the extent of the damage.

In August, Cal Fire denied nearly $3 million in funding to seven communities in the Santa Monica Mountains, including Big Rock and Topanga Canyon east of Malibu, both of which were hit hard by the Palisades Fire Influence. The funds will be used to “build pioneering partnerships to help bridge the gap between professional first responders and local communities during major disaster events,” according to state records. The goal is to create “more communities that are resilient to wildfires and risks.”

Brent Woodworth, president and CEO of the Los Angeles Emergency Preparedness Foundation, the nonprofit that submitted the grant application, said the foundation plans to use the funds to conduct so-called home fire zone assessments. The organization provides free, detailed assessments that identify specific steps homeowners can take to reduce the risk of a damaging fire.

He said the foundation previously conducted hundreds of investigations using about $133,000 in funding from Cal Fire's last round of grants.

“Fire home surveys are incredibly valuable because even in this particular situation, we know that many of the homes that not only we surveyed, but the homeowners actually took mitigation measures, their homes were damaged during this Palisades survived the fire,” Woodworth said.

Henning said Cal Fire is concerned about the “high cost” of the foundation's proposal.

Helen Poulos, a professor of environmental and earth sciences at Wesleyan University, said fortifying homes is the most effective tool residents and communities have to reduce the risk of catastrophic wildfires in cities and peri-urban areas, such as the areas burned in the Palisades Fire. There are no universities involved in Cal Fire funding decisions.

Assessments like the type provided by Woodworth's group are key, she said, because homeowners who follow the recommendations can help limit the spread of fires in densely populated areas.

“It's simple. When we're talking about wildland urban interfaces, cutting funding means communities are at greater risk,” said Poulos, who grew up in Southern California and earned her bachelor's degree from Pepperdine University in Malibu. Wildfires have been studied for decades.

“It's much easier to maintain the status quo than to create these fire-adapted communities,” she added. “Not doing something is a management decision.”

Some projects in the Los Angeles area receive only partial funding from Cal Fire. In August, the agency awarded about half of more than $1.6 million in grants requested by the Santa Monica Mountains Fire Safety Council for fire protection efforts in Pacific Palisades, Malibu and other communities in the region.

Pauline Allen, the organization's executive director, said the funding will be used to implement wildfire resiliency plans and conduct home fire zone assessments.

She said officials told her the “overall budget for education and prevention grants was lower than expected” and that “prevention education in particular” had been cut.

Now about half a year later, the organization is still waiting for grant funding to start flowing.

“I wish the money came faster,” Allen said. “It's a very slow process.”

Henning said Cal Fire declined to provide some of the funding the commission requested because the original proposal “included 'home reinforcement' — which was funded through the alternative grant program.”

Meanwhile, also in August, Cal Fire awarded the Shasta Valley Resource Conservation District an $86,000 grant, $86,000 more than the $1.7 million it requested, for 682 acres outside Yreka. The land was “mechanically cleared of trees”. Fewer than 8,000 people live near Mount Shasta, and the surrounding area has been hit by fires in recent years.

As part of the same grant program, the state agency in August applied for nearly $300,000 more than the $1.78 million Mariposa County, population about 20,000, applied for to manage vegetation along county roads.

Cal Fire also awarded $538,000 in August — nearly $47,000 more than the Kern Fire Safety Commission requested — for dirt road grading and construction in Hart Flat, a small rural community in Kern County. Other work projects.

Last fiscal year, the state refused to provide Los Angeles County $1.5 million to clear insect-infested trees that had “become a fire hazard” in large swaths of the county, including the Santa Monica Mountains. Henning said the area where the work is proposed “has been identified as an active treatment area through another grant”.

That same fiscal year, Cal Fire allocated more than $527,000 to “graze goats on very steep areas and mow other areas annually” at UC Santa Cruz.

Cal Fire did fund at least one project in the past few years aimed at increasing wildfire preparedness in areas freshly burned by the Palisades Fire, and it will fund nearly $390,000 in 2021 to “improve homeowners' ability to defend their space.” Management,” the projects are located on property adjacent to the Santa Monica Mountains National Recreation Area.

But the state often funds fire prevention efforts in lower-risk areas than Pacific Palisades.

Cal Fire announced in August that it would award the city of Escondido nearly $250,000 to distribute fire prevention mail to 20,200 packages in state-designated “high fire severity areas.”

That same month, Allen's Santa Monica Mountains Fire Safety Council received only about half of the more than $1.6 million it requested for the district, which it said in its grant application said nearly 98 percent of the district's It is classified as an “extremely high fire severity area”. “

When asked whether receiving full payment on time could reduce the number of homes burned in the Palisades Fire, Allen responded: “It's hard to say could, would, should. But I think there's a big possibility in the Santa Monica Mountains risk.”