 Afternoon everyone and thank you for joining the Santa Rosa Fire Department and the Office of Community Engagement for such an important and timely series on being wildfire ready. My name is Magali Teyes and I am the Director of Community Engagement for the City of Santa Rosa. Buenas tardes a todos y gracias por su presencia y participación en este evento tan importante sobre cómo estar preparado para los incendios forestales. Mi nombre es Magali Teyes y soy la Directora de Participación Comunitaria de la Ciudad de Santa Rosa. Si gustaría sintonarse en español, puede hacerlo haciendo click en el icono del globo que dice interpretation en el fondo de la pantalla. ASL interpretation is also provided and the interpreter will be spotlight for the duration of this webinar. To our presenters, please, we ask that you speak clearly and allow for our Spanish and ASL translation. Now to get us started, I would like to introduce Fire Chief Scott Westrow. Thank you. Thank you, Magali, and thank you for everyone who is joining us today. Thanks for taking your lunch hour with us and really appreciate everyone being here and being engaged at this level. I know some of you may have been on for our presentation yesterday and this may be a little bit redundant, but I wanted to take this opportunity to thank Director Teyes and her team for putting this together. This was Magali's brainchild and this was her idea and she's really been the driving force behind getting this off the ground and we're happy to partner with the Office of Community Engagement in this endeavor. So a little bit about why we are doing this. Really, if you look at everything that's going on in the community and everything that has gone on in the community, the one bonding element has been the fires. And that bond has built really a sense of strength and resiliency throughout the community, but it also comes with the unfortunate trauma that goes along with it. So I feel that we've collectively shown as a community what resiliency looks like and how that strength actually unites us. So as has been evidence over the last four years, we've shown that we're stronger together. Nobody's in this alone. It's not the fire department being stronger. It's not the city or the city employees. It's everybody, including those community members. So really appreciate everybody being here. This series is designed to essentially look at where we've been, where we're going, how to heal personally and as a community, and how to be more prepared and control the elements of what we can control. When you look at what controls a wildfire or a vegetation fire, there's only certain elements that we can actually control and the number one area there is fuel. So that's one of the things we're focusing most on. But every little thing that we can do, any member of the community can do to their home or to their property is going to make us all stronger in the end. So that's really where this bond of strength comes from and the direction that we're going. Our second session today will discuss lessons learned from the 2017 Sonoma County wildfires in the 2020 glass fire and how the city of Santa Rosa is assisting residents to ensure their homes and properties are wildfire ready. Top is covered in the session will include the wildland urban interface, funding for wildfire prevention, home hardening, defensible space, weed abatement and more. The changes that we've seen in the response to wildland fires we've experienced over the last several years have been remarkable. But it's not just a fire department issue. It's not a public safety issue. It's not the city or the county effort alone. This is a whole community approach to changes that leads to improvement and resiliency. The changes are working, but they can be better. Just as a point of clarification, if we look at the Tubbs Fire alone, not including the Nuns Fire, the Tubbs Fire within the city limits, we were very unfortunate to lose nine lives and over and right around 3100 homes or structures. We've three years forward to the glass fire. We lost no lives, thankfully, and only 32 structures were destroyed. Our common goal is a net zero across the board, and that's what we're working towards to get to that, that common zero where we have no structures lost, no lives lost. We may lose some property in the process because Mother Nature is going to win that battle every day. But we need to get to that net zero and it takes all of us to get there. I want to take a quick opportunity while I have some time to talk about some of the changes. The fire department specifically has made in the last four years just to give everybody some education and maybe some sense of calm and reassurance. Number one is early detection of fires. We have an advanced network of weather stations that we utilize on a daily basis, if not more, to track the weather as it's coming in and prepare our resources based off the weather. And we also have the advanced wildfire detecting camera systems that are throughout the county. They've just actually added an AI feature to those. So now the cameras will actually notify us when it sees smoke on the horizon. There's been major improvements to the alert and warning systems in the county. Really, it's based on a change of philosophy. The city now has access and is able to use all of the alerting tools available. We obviously do early and very fruitful evacuations to get people out of the way so we can go in and engage the fire. And we have pre designated evacuation zones throughout the entire county, including the city. We've worked very hard to increase our cooperation and collaboration with all of our partners, particularly at the federal state and local government level, but we're also including nonprofit organizations and educational institutions. The operational enhancements we've made them been very, very significant, including we do a lot more upstaffing where we add additional equipment or people on when we see weather situations coming into the county. And that goes not only for the city, but throughout the county. So we have additional firefighters and fire engines on the street. We'll use state funding for prepositioning of resources to bring outside resources in to bolster our firefighting force. And we have a new county all call system where we can call every firefighter back to duty throughout the entire county. We use that first in the Kincaid fire. We actually used it twice in the Kincaid fire and then again in the class fire. So that brings everybody back to duty with one push of the button from our dispatch center. One of the things you'll be hearing a lot about today and throughout the course of this fire season is the development and implementation of a vegetation management program that's based off our community wildfire protection plan. That's a bulk of what the Fire Prevention Bureau has been working on and that has been funded and is in play now. And then development and implementation of what we call the wild then resiliency and response strategic plan. Essentially, that was a look at the organization on how we can improve our response to wildland fires without adding stations or people. So with that, we're we're in the process of purchasing to two additional wildland firefighting engines with two more on the way after that. Different equipment. We're looking at our staffing models are operational components. So it's really retooling the entire organization to face this new normal that we're we're experiencing here in Sonoma County. And last but certainly not least is the enhancement to community engagement before, during and after a weather event or major incident. Quite frankly, this is part of that and I don't think seven year or sorry four years ago we would have seen the turnout for this type of event as we are today. So again, we're not in this alone and we're not done, regardless of how the fire department in the city have improved to face this new normal. The community deserves a bulk of the credit. We have witnessed a major shift in preparation, engagement, awareness and reactivity by the community. And if it wasn't all for you, we couldn't do our job. Before we move to the next speaker, I'd just like to remind everybody that Spanish translation is available and ASL interpretation is available as well. So with that, I will turn it over to Assistant Fire Marshal Paul Lowenthal to introduce us to our next topic. Thank you. Paul, if you're talking, I think you're muted. I apologize. You'd think after a year of doing this, I'd get that hit it twice. Let's try that again. My name is Paul Lowenthal, Assistant Fire Marshal with the Santa Rosa Fire Department and I'm joined by Fire Marshal Scott Moon. The two of us today will bring forth a number of topics. For those of you that are following the entire series of Wildfire Ready, there's obviously a lot of information to cover. Our goal is to not only share some of that information here, but also ensure that our community as a whole is aware of the resources that have been developed over not only what we've learned over the last couple of years, but through ultimately our goals that are better to prepare our community for what unfortunately seems to be the new normal around Sonoma County and the Greater Bay Area. Wildfire Ready for us is an exciting opportunity. It is our ability to engage again with our community and share resources and make our community as a whole better prepared. So one of the first questions we get pretty regularly still is, what is the wooey or the wildland urban interface and where is it These days, the wooey is actually getting confused with unfortunately because of the current conditions which highlights the importance of this series. The drought or water use efficiency. So there's a lot of community meetings that have been taking place that are using that term interchangeably. However, for purposes of this again when we're talking about the wooey, although water use efficiency and the drought or concerns of ours. It is referring to the wildland urban interface fire area, what we refer to as locally. And that's an area that is a significant risk to wildfires here locally within the city of Santa Rosa. And our area also includes some of the states by very high fire hazard severity zones. So even though the state has some of those zones within the city limits. We the city of Santa Rosa have defined our local area as required to by state law for the areas that we have classified as the wooey Where any applicable codes for new development construction ordinances all are specific to that geographical area. So the area was originally Developed in 2007 and the area, although has been in filled and additional residents have built built within it. The boundaries of it have not changed. Historically, we had directed residents back to a PDF that had a general area of the map showing where the areas were. And as you can see, they're kind of broken up into four primary areas in Santa Rosa. One being in the northeast, sorry, northwest part of the city, the fountain grove into Hidden Valley Montecito Heights area to the northeast the Skyhawk and kind of North Calistoga Road area to the southeast stretching from Malita Road all the way down to Bennett Valley Heights on the Anadol State Park side of Summerfield Road and to our Far East coming in again off of Malita and Los Alamos Road area into the south and southwest side of Oakmont. Based on feedback and really our intention to provide as much information and make it as easily accessible to our community as possible. Part of the development of our overall wildfire ready strategy was a new website srcity.org forward slash wildfire ready is the hub of a lot of the information you'll hear throughout the week. And again, where we're pushing residents to to get the information on that website is now a link. Wildland over an interface that will now take you to a website where residents can now type in their address and see whether or not they're within or outside of the wildland or interface. We also have some areas within our wui that are not within the city limits where we have county islands. The website will let you know now whether you're in or outside of the city limits and help guide you to your respective fire agency for us locally for those county pockets within our wui. You'll be under the jurisdiction of Sonoma County Fire District or permit Sonoma, the building representatives for the county of Sonoma. So jumping right into it, what we want to do as an organization again is is ultimately protect your home protect your structure. So up next will be Scott moon who will take you through some of the important elements that include defensible space to home hardening. Good afternoon. Thank you, Paul. As we begin to look at protecting your home. Pardon me, we focus on three key areas, the first being that of defensible space. And what we want to look at here is to kind of try and simplify this we hear defensible space as a buzzword shared quite often in this arena. This is actually going to be a buffer zone that you implement around your home between that space and the wildland area. What we want to try and do is take that opportunity to prevent any type of direct flame contact or that possibility for radiant heat. And what we would look at doing is focusing in on three key areas of the home ignition zones. And when we begin, you can move to the next slide, Paul. This map will give you a representation of those three key areas and we look at zone one within that structural framework. As our stepping out our back door, if you will, and we want to look from that zero to 30 foot area. We want to take the opportunity to move around your property and that zero to 30 may not be as expansive as this picture dictates it may be the perspective of to your property line. But you want to take full advantage of the opportunities to limiting trees that may be overhanging your home to back 10 foot from your structure, so you create separation. You also want to utilize as much hardscape as you can around your structure. Paul will touch on that a little bit more in a few moments, but look to incorporate non combustible types of materials that can be utilized within your footprint. And try and take out any items that are unnecessarily placed within that zero to 30 foot zone. That really is going to be your strongest defense. The next area is that zone to or we want to look at the 30 to 100 foot separation. The picture that you're seeing now just illustrates for you some of those examples where homes have taken that step to provide the separation within their boundaries and how it can look in a landscape format where you have multiple homes that are going to join one another. We can see how the fire will burn in certain areas and that can be due to the fuel treatments within those areas and the separations. But when we're in that zone to what we want to focus on is the fact that now we're looking at more of that 30 to 100 foot area. So we're stepping back and we're trying to provide a much broader focus and we want to create separation of the fuel types. And if you can look at it from the perspective of fuel islands, if you will, so instead of having groupings of large plant material, try and break them up into smaller islands. So that way if there is fire burning through the area, what you can see is the ability for separation of fuel types so you prevent that rapid growth and you actually would have slower development within those areas. The other thing we talked about another key word is ladder fuel. And what ladder fuel means is you have your ground covering material or the base of that ladder, and then you'll have trees or brush. And by taking the opportunity to limb up the trees and brush to create that separation. In essence, what you do is you eliminate that ladder fuel. So the ground covering is going to ignite. And as it does you're going to get flame heights based on the type of material that you may have in those areas. Those flame heights can easily get into brush and trees if not properly trim. So hence removing that ladder fuel or the ability for the fuels to migrate from one low surface area material to a higher area. The other thing we want to talk about is separation of trees and the tree tops. So as we look at tree spacing on the property, trying to remove unnecessary trees that are bunched or grouped together. Again, we're looking at slowing down any approaching fire to the area that moves into your property and has ample fuel. We want to reduce that fuel loading and provide more separation. And for the properties that do have that area, zone three is 100 to 200 foot from your structure. So obviously that gets much more broad. And again, we're looking to thin out material. We're looking to remove dead trees that maybe on the ground snags is another term you'll hear those referred to. But we're wanting to remove that litter and debris from the ground cover areas. So that way, it minimizes that travel of fuel into that location. And it gives you the opportunity to have more resistance to ignition of your property due to a passing or impending wildfire into your area. And with that, we can move to the next slide. And as mentioned, this was an example of homes within the glass fire footprint, where we observe some different fire burn patterns, and how different areas were impacted based on the fuel loading and the fuel types within that area. And Paul, if there's anything additional you wanted to share on that. Thank you, Scott. Yeah, the, as you can see, and Scott said, set it pretty clearly is that we did see a lot of good examples of what defensible space can do within our community. It's very clear that a lot of the homeowners have been in the warnings and the information that we've been sharing has been well received and really did lead to a lot of good saves throughout the glass fire, where our firefighters were able to actively engage in the neighborhoods fight fire and use a lot of the defensible space and techniques that we had asked and have been educated on and it truly did pay off. There were some areas where it didn't work out as well. And that's part of why we're continuing to do this and we're continuing to share information. And that hopes, hopefully more people will provide for better defensible space and different measures to reduce the risks associated with fires here locally. And then keying in off of what Scott talked about, we're really focusing a lot of our education and outreach on that zero to five foot zone. That has proven to be an area that has led to a lot of destruction locally, but also an area that's led to a lot of successful saves. We're really pushing residents to to remove a lot of the combustible vegetation mulches different materials from around their homes that are more susceptible to Ember cast. We watched both the glass, the tubs, the nuns, and the threats associated with the Kinkade and what the Ember cast was doing to structure structures within the, the front of the fire. We know that the weak spot and one of the weak areas is where those embers are, are catching and leading to structures that are igniting, and then further pushing and spreading the fire. So our hope is that not only will people land their trees up, remove vegetation from out and around their properties but really look at their own homes. And for us. Again, we're really hoping to discourage a lot of the barks specifically here in the picture you see is gorilla hair mulch. No matter how many conversations and community meetings we've had about it. We still see its use within our wildland interface. As you can see here, it's extremely problematic, not only does it burn very easily, but it also ties up a lot of resources. This home is probably standing today because firefighters worked hard and feverishly to put out a lot of the gorilla that had caught fire and was spreading in the winds around the property. So we are looking at potential ordinances that will regulate the types of materials that can be used within our wildland interface. So the first step we've taken is for all new construction built within our wildland interface, we will now require zero to five feet of non combustible space zone for new structures that are unsprinkled and three feet for sprinkled structures. So that is something new that we're doing here, and that will be the first of many ordinances that will be working on through our new vegetation management program. The other thing that we're hearing a lot of is cost associated with this zones, a majority of our homes within our wooey are existing structures that have existing vegetation plants materials. Anything you do in those areas is going to be a step in the right direction, whether it's limping your bushes up removing the leaf litter, thinning the materials out. Nothing is going to be a step in the right direction, but now is the time, especially in light of the drought, where there's different measures that can be taken to not only protect your structure, but also reduce your use of water. So we are encouraging people to continue to remove vegetation from immediately around the structure again to reduce the threat of fire, reduce the fuels that could be ignited from Embercast, and ultimately help save water. Alright, with this next slide, we wanted to touch on that third key element back to protecting your home, and that stems to home hardening. And when you think of home hardening, the majority of the homes within our wildland urban interface area are pre existing of more restrictive building code requirements that integrate home hardening into the construction method. So when we, we think about this it seems very overwhelming of where do I start and what can I do. And when we look back on some of our experiences while being out in the field. During these epic fires, we have seen such simple things that can be done that are low cost, but very high impact. And that starts with vents of your home that previous picture that Paul had shown you could see the vents just off of the ground level. So by ensuring that you have proper protective screens in place. There's a number of different products that are on the market available for retrofit of existing homes will actually incorporate some studies from UC analysts that have put together various information to help us understand the different areas that are available out there. A number of them are, as I mentioned, easy to retrofit into existing homes, and can achieve a better ability of your home to resist the intrusion of an ember driven fire. So those are good starting points to look at all the eaves throughout your home, and try to incorporate a new screening protective measure in those locations. The other item, very simple is gutter guards. And what we have found is, when people do not take that opportunity in the summer months to clear gutters of accumulated debris and materials that fell over the previous winter. What we find is those become easy targets for wind driven embers to land and ignite within those locations, as well as they are going to give you the ability to ignite portions of the home that may be in direct contact with that type of information. So what you can do is take the time during the summer months to clean your gutters. And once they are clean, go ahead and install relatively inexpensive gutter guards that will help through the fall time of when we see the most accumulation of litter and debris, and prevent that from accumulating within your gutters. So the gutters can actually work as designed to remove the water that runs off from your roof, but not accumulate that litter and debris that can then become combustible materials, leading to potential ignition of your home. Another relatively inexpensive item is to weatherproof your home. So with the use of weather stripping materials, you can walk around your home and self inspect and check for gaps within any man doors windows, your garage door. Those are all locations when exposed to a wind driven fire embers have the opportunity to migrate to the interior of your home, very similar to that of the vent locations that we spoke about. So when you take that time to go through and provide that weather stripping or the weather element to remove that ability of wind driven fires to push the embers into your home, then you increase your survivability during that wind driven fire. The next slide, Paul. The other areas that we did not touch on, we could look at decks and trying to incorporate again this is at a more large scale and we understand there's larger costs associated, but look at replacing combustible decks with non combustible materials. Look at your siding and see if there's opportunities for you to incorporate non combustible siding materials. A big one is your roof. So the roof is probably the most susceptible point on your home, given the surface area and the probability of having material and debris that blows on it during a wind driven fire. So looking at opportunities to replace your roofing material with a newer non combustible type of material. And then windows is another key area windows actually play in with your skylights if you have them incorporated into your home as well. So trying to replace them with double pain and also if you can get tempered glass as it does not shatter, and it would provide more susceptibility of integrity and not allowing the flame to penetrate through the window and into the interior of the home. There are ways where we can find those next steps and trying to realize this is a very large cost in an effort to make these changes but trying to take small steps in that effort and trying to identify areas in which every step you take like Paul mentioned where you can improve your survivability is what the key is. So as we began, we want to look at our defensible space and we want to work from our home out. And if we're in an area where we're known fires are moving to our home in advance of evacuation. Take the time to move combustibles inside move combustibles away from the exterior of your home. Take that advantage of the opportunity you have to make your home less susceptible to ignition, move plants away from the home, move plants away from windows or openings, where you can ignite and then easily travel into the home. These are all small steps that you can take in your effort to again try and make your home as least susceptible to ignition during any type of wildfire that may impact your property. And with that I'll turn it back over to Paul. Thank you Scott. So the next thing we want to talk about is our weed abatement program. So not just focusing on what our homeowners can do, but what we're doing or requiring to be done to make our community safer. So on the weed abatement standpoint, there's sort of two elements associated with it. One is the management of vegetation or fuels grasses throughout our community on city owned properties and in coordination on a lot of open spaces and HOA properties so we regularly on an annual coordinate with the county for areas of open space and property they have within the city limits. The state, both fish and wildlife who have a number of open spaces in our community, as well as Caltrans with their right of ways, both undeveloped and developed, as well as city owned properties. In addition to that work that is initiated early in the season and prioritized at the highest risk and working its way down as you can imagine from a city, county and state level, there's a lot of properties throughout the city. And the goal is to work through them as quickly as efficiently as possible with the resources available. So understanding, unfortunately, that as much as we wish we could snap our fingers and have everything done at once. It's not the world we live in and we're forced with making the decisions based on risk and typically working in our while in our face and high risk areas first, and away from them. We encourage residents if they see areas of concern to, in some cases you'll you'll see the historically, the timeframes that those properties are completed, and to allow us the community to work through them at a local and county level, as we continue to work with our community to bring their properties into compliance. It is our intention to educate and explain and help guide versus moving straight to enforcement, however, we do have an enforcement plan for those that do not comply. Historically, we conduct and initiate our weed abatement inspections once fire season is declared. Historically the declaration has been based off of Cal fire season. However, Cal fire, as of last year, no longer declares or stops fire season. For them, it's always a fire season around the state. They change their staffing levels based on the needs, which may, which necessitated us to utilize a new process to declare fire season locally and that's what you saw done here for the first time with the declaration of our season started on the 17th of this month. And the reason is declared all properties within our wildland of interface. So all properties with the wildland interface are required to comply with the ordinance, as well as all undeveloped vacant lots in the city. And then any other property that happens to have more than a half an acre of undeveloped land. So really our focus is on the wooey and all vacant lots around the city. When all is said and done the fire department will have inspected upwards of 13,000 properties for compliance with the ordinance. A notice is sent out once inspections are initiated to property owners, letting them know of the requirements and that a re inspection will take place. Well, typically take us almost upwards in some cases, several weeks to a month to get through the first round of inspections throughout the entire city. That allows property owners in most cases to abate their properties and bring it into compliance by the time a second inspection is done. If after the second inspection is done, and we go through our notice of violations and properties remain out of compliance. We have a process to then abate the property and then recover our costs associated with the abatement and the inspection. Historically, we do see significant compliance. Primarily after the first inspection is done, our outreach ahead of the season typically alleviates a lot of the need for notices. However, there still are a lot of properties that will historically take action after they receive the notice. One of the areas that we struggled with compliance, believe it or not, and is actually a lot of our burn scars. There's a number of residents who went through a significant loss in 2017. However, their properties had historically been well maintained and landscaped after the fires during rebuilds and or while the properties were waiting to rebuild. The significant properties had regrowth of seasonal grasses, and we're noticed for non compliance with the ordinance. The goal was always to make our community safer. We heard a lot of negative feedback about the notices to our survivors. However, our goal was to make it safe for the community, and ultimately to make it safe for a lot of the rebuilds taking place within our wui. The wui is where as controlled as we can possibly make them. So what else are we doing in within our community to make us safer. Our community wildfire protection plan is truly the backbone of everything we're doing here today, and we'll continue to do the community wildfire protection plan was a plan that was approved in September of last year and it serves as the five year plan for us that will be renewed in five years, but it's the outline for what we can do with a roadmap to mitigate our risks and losses associated with the threat of wildfires locally. So the community wildfire protection plan truly was a collaborative community effort. Not only did it involve the consultants that were hired through a grant, but it also involved a significant amount of public outreach feedback comments. Meetings with steering our steering committee stakeholders throughout the city and county at a local and state level, as well as upwards of 600 additional surveys that were filled out by community members. With that, the plan identified where our threats were to our community, as you can see on the map is a risk assessment map. As well as kind of the hazards associated with the fuels within our community. So to understand what actions we needed to take and where our threats and risks were and how we should mitigate them. So there was science involved in this process, public feedback involved in the process. And ultimately it outlined what we feel will be a successful roadmap for us to ultimately make our community safer. With it came nine objectives with 46 actionable items. They covered everything from improvement, the improvement of our tracking and coordination systems, which is a GIS or a mapping component. We're already underway. Our goal with that is to track and map where vegetation management and fuel reductions are taking place throughout our community. We're working to approve our evacuation routes. We have applied for a $2.8 million grant for several evacuation routes throughout our city that money will be used to offset the costs and pay for the removal of fuels along those routes primarily on private property. To educate our public on how to mitigate the risks associated with the damage from wildfires, the website srcity.org forward slash wildfire ready is the first big step we are taking to improve not only our education, but improve our preparedness, which is the next objective. A lot of work has gone in and will continue to go into that website to centralize the information for our residents and where they can go to get current good information for what they can do within their home, within their property and around their neighborhoods. We recognize the need to increase structural hardening, meaning we have a lot of existing non conforming homes within our community that were built decades ago that are still tucked within our wildland. We have applied for another several million dollars worth of grants designed to help offset the costs of defensible space and home hardening elements. These are two grants that are currently with FEMA. It's important to note that the city has been applying for several million dollars worth of grants since 2017, and have been unsuccessful with the exception of the grant that we received for the Community Wildfire Protection Program. Our hope with the plan and a lot of the work that we're doing at a local, state and federal level will help get those grants approved so that we can start helping our community be better prepared. To treat vegetation to reduce the wildfire risks. We have another grant that was submitted to Cal Fire for treatment and removal of dead vegetation and dead trees on the north side of Fountain Grove into the Riebley Mark West corridor that will help mitigate the risks of future wildfires from our community. We will hopefully help offset the costs of private property owners, which again will make our community safer. One thing we've learned both through the development of the plan and through history is that our community is at risk from wildfires that enter the city from the north. So you're going to see a lot of effort put into hardening our community on the north side to prevent that repeat incident. To improve our inspection and enforcement program. We will be rolling out not only ordinances, but ultimately education and education and inspection programs. So our goal is to educate our community on the needs, inspect them and ultimately move our community into an enforcement of these future rules and regulations to make our community as a whole safer. And the website wildfire ready as I mentioned really is going to be the hub for our community. We will continue to improve upon this website will continue to provide information based on feedback we receive based on the lessons we continue to learn updates on grants, a lot of this information will all be found here. And we look forward to not only the remainder of this week, and a lot of the elements that will be covering, but the future of our ability to engage with our community in the years to come with that. Obviously there's a lot of information that we have to cover. Based on a number of topics, but really want to guide our community to this website and allow you the opportunity to be educated, learn more. And with that, I will toss it back to Magali and we'll start our question answers. Thank you so much for all of that really great information. We're going to just get in here there are a lot of good questions. Thank you for your question to any of our panelists. We have from a community member. I'm unclear why the homes that are but Taylor Mountain Park, including the regular rent subdivision are not in the wildland urban interface. So there's a number of elements that go into defining what is the way what is required for the way. And that area, based on fuel topography is not. We will continue to evaluate any changes in them, but there's a lot that comes with being incorporated in the wui. We did get not only questions from that area but also within Coffee Park for why that area isn't included or hasn't been included. There's certain conditions and findings that have to be found and reported to the state that then need to be adopted at a local level. It's not as simple as just maintaining and calling it a wui a lot comes with it comes compliance with code and unfortunately as we're also seeing it comes with a lot of concerns and issues with insurance so we want to make sure that areas of our city that are in the wui need to be in the wui and we do not intend to just move the line across the city without having a good solid basis for it. Thank you. So the next question we have here is a community member stated, we spent much time walking the fire burned areas during the lockdown. Our strongest impression was a burned houses near unburned ones. Has anyone done a study of why some houses burn and others don't. For example, at Mountain Hawk, the fire jumped over almost all houses closest to the hill and burn 12 houses farther from the hill. Yeah, so a lot was learned and a lot was looked at in Mountain Hawk specifically as you saw from some of the pictures early on defensible space and home hardening definitely paid off in some cases and made it very easy for firefighters to engage and protect the structures. In other cases, regardless of a lot of the education and outreach and information there's some residents that have just chosen to not take action. And or they just don't have the financial means to take action we are aware of that and that is part of why we are applying for grants to help offset some of those costs. But in some of the cases where we saw the significant structural damage. It was based on the type of fuels brush trees and ladder fuels that were in their yards on those downhill slope sides of their structures that were open. Almost helped fuel and aid the the direction of the fire. And in other areas, it was based on combustible vegetation and ships and materials immediately against fences and up against structures. So those lessons learned and what we saw are what is being discussed and worked on behind the scenes to help develop future future ordinances to get people to take action in some cases to mitigate that risk and again protect our community. Thank you and sort of similar to that previous question. Will the city of Santa Rosa required non combustible fences adjacent to structures and it will be area. That has been added to the most recent code adoption that is for new structures so that's something to be mindful of new homes that are built within the wildland of an interface or subject to more restrictive building requirements. As Paul mentioned, there are a number of recommendations we make for the existing or we refer to as built environment and taking the opportunity to replace combustible materials that a but your home and utilize non combustible materials or other conditions is our high recommendation at this point and we will continue to evaluate as we move forward. And I will add one thing we have heard is the need to or request to not allow wooden fences within our wildland interface at all. We do not have a plan or intend to do that at that point at this point, where we did see fences destroyed by fire where areas where they had heavy amounts of leaf litter and other combustible landscape materials up against fences. We did see entire neighborhoods that had significant amounts of destruction, and the fences were 100% intact because there was no receptive fuel bed meaning the embers had nothing to ignite so we are encouraging residents to clear leaf litter and clear in some cases some of that more heavily susceptible mulch material away from wooden fences to keep them from igniting and we do on that website, the wildfire ready website under resources have a study on different types of chips and mulches. Thank you. Another good question here. Is there a fire danger inspection service that can come to our house and tell us what we need to do, and then separate it separately and similarly, would you be able to recommend where to get vented screens or vent screens. Yes, so two pieces to that we through the vegetation management program funds have just brought on an additional fire inspector, and we'll be hiring a second additional fire inspector, both of them will be assigned to our vegetation management program, and will be available to conduct inspections and assessments within our community. So we will have information on that that will get posted on our website. I will commit to getting that information up on our website by the end of the week under resources so we will have that and the ability to contact some of the staff to help with those assessments. Again that is our goal to get out there and engage with our community and help provide that information. As far as the brands of the vents, I believe, Chief Moon had discussed that we will put up a study again under that resources tab, we did get some of those additional questions. And we'll make sure that the information related to the events is also included with different types of brands, and that you see study that was done will be on our resources tab as well. A quick follow up my golly, you can go to home improvement stores such as Home Depot lows, they carry a number of different products within their inventory. And there will also be in the materials that Paul is going to provide on the website references to different manufacturers as well of compliant installation products that can be utilized for that purpose. Thank you. And then here's a question of, we have many gallons and gas cans for our emergency generator. Where should we place these cans if we know the house is going to be overrun from the fire or I'm assuming if there's already a situation. It's going to depend on a case by case basis, you know whether you have a flammable liquid storage locker which believe it or not a lot of residents do where it's a cabinet specifically designed to put flammable liquids in other residents will choose to put them out at least 30 to 50 feet away from the home in a clear open space that's clear to vegetation and other residents will put it out in the driveway away from the structure so making it, you know getting it out away from the the side of your home or area where it could fuel the fire is our priority. But again, a lot of times it just depends on the quantities, what resources you have and the setup of your property. Another question about the crawl space under your house should the vents should the vents be sealed. You don't want to seal them. And that's actually something to be aware of to and why oftentimes will ask that you consult sometimes a professional, depending on any existing issues you have with ventilation, whether it's moisture and your sub floor or attic. That's something to be aware of, but the venting that we want to see done is yes at the ground level as well as the attic level. Think of your events as kind of the ability to think of embers like rice. If you can easily take rice and throw it through your vents, the embers can get in there so it really highlights the importance of replacing those quarter inch typical older screens with something finer. Either overlaid on top or underneath, or completely replaced by one of the retrofit vents. Okay, our next question is, we see that many people's houses are nearly are on inaccessible roads that the fire department may not be able to get up to. So will these folks have some sort of notice to that effect. And what is our way for them to find that information out that they they're on an inaccessible road before we have a fire. So if the question is about their specific driveway. So our inspections, when we start doing defensible space at home hardening, sorry defensible space inspections will be access. So we do require 13 foot, six inches of access on fire department roads so far access roads that are required for fire department access. That is something that we will enforce on on roadways actively. But the question is about our ability to just educate a lot of those resources and information is on our website under the ready set go program. But again it's it's it depends on on the circumstances but yes we do want property owners to clear their driveways to make it accessible for us so that we can get in and protect structures in the event of a wildfire. And there's another question here that on the city's wildfire ready website. Will there be a place for community comment suggestions and will there be folks monitoring those comments and feedback. No, we're encouraging residents to currently use the email SRFD at SR city.org that email is monitored by fire department administration and those emails are quickly moved over to typically myself. But who will then identify based on it being related to vegetation management program, what either needs to be done to address it or how to respond to the question, but our goal is to centralize that by email right now. Thank you and our pet doors a fire hazard. And that's going to depend what kind of door it is is it free swinging. You know any, any opening has the potential especially if it can easily blow open in the wind then yes, there's the potential that it can blow open and allow embers to get in so consider the direction that the door opens, whether it opens out whether it opens out as a nevermind doors swing both ways. Yes, there's the potential that it can be a weak spot. So consider putting it in an area that may be more protected from the wind. Thank you. What can we do as renters to get the owners to do some fire preparedness. Even as a renter, you're welcome to make the request for us to come do an assessment. We're happy to provide the recommendations and they can be passed along to the homeowner. Thank you and I think we'll end with this question since we're running out of time is the city looking at the age of occupants within the wooey neighborhoods to help identify identify higher risk areas. We do regularly work with our various community members. If the question looks like the question is specific to age. I wouldn't say that's necessarily a factor to make it a higher risk area. It highlights the importance of community engagement events like this. Not only through this program but a lot of the work that we do with various ways and higher higher risk community members. We regularly engage with our nonprofits, as well as different organizations for more vulnerable populations. Like Oakmont, for example, we do a lot of work with the Oakmont Village Association, as well as the various ways, as well as some of our other senior communities throughout Santa Rosa so fire obviously doesn't recognize boundaries doesn't recognize age. Our goal is purely to just do what we can to make sure everybody has the resources and the information, regardless of age. Thank you so much. All of our panelists presenters we are unfortunately out of time. However, I do invite everyone to join us tomorrow and Thursday, we will continue providing information. And our next event on our website at 12pm we will have an English version of the program and at 6pm a Spanish version of the program where we will have a fantastic nonprofits that are partnering with us to talk about our shared trauma around wildfires. Thank you so much and please visit our website and the email provided as well. Thank you all have a great day.