Two measures aimed at reducing wildfire risk across California advanced out of committee this week with bipartisan, unanimous support, state Sen. Ben Allen, D-Pacific Palisades, announced Wednesday.
Senate Bills 894 and 1297 are designed to improve both community-scale fire prevention efforts and individual home hardening, according to Allen’s office.
“Too many lives are being lost, homes destroyed, and public resources wasted to more frequent and destructive fires over recent years,” Allen said in a statement. “The fire risk we face is driving an affordability crisis through rising insurance premiums and utility bills. It’s clear we need a more holistic approach to building community resilience.”
Allen said home hardening and defensible space improvements can reduce a structure’s fire risk by nearly 50% when implemented together, but the cost of such upgrades has limited participation.
SB 894 would provide low-interest loans to homeowners and small businesses to help finance those improvements, modeled after the state’s GoGreen financing program.
Allen said broader coordination is also needed to address wildfire risk at the community level.
SB 1297 would establish Regional Wildfire Public Private Partnerships to coordinate mitigation efforts among insurers, utilities, government agencies and nonprofits. The partnerships would focus on projects aimed at reducing risk across larger areas while improving insurability and limiting potential damage from utility infrastructure.
“As we support fire resilience for more individual structures, we also need to consider the benefits of community-scale efforts that can efficiently improve fire resilience across broader regions,” Allen said. “Home hardening and community hardening go hand-in-hand, and it is not only possible, but necessary that we prioritize both efforts simultaneously given the many beneficiaries when we minimize damages across California.”
Both measures are expected to be heard next in the Senate Appropriations Committee in the coming weeks.