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Abstract
California's foothill counties are the scene of rapid development. All types of construction in former wildlands is creating an intermix of wildland-structures-wildland that is different from the traditional "urban-wildland interface." The fire and structural environment for seven counties is described. Fire statistics are compared with growth patterns from 1970 to 1985. Potentials for the year 2000 are suggested. California planning law is overviewed in relation to development. Local governments and fire services have underutilized existing authorities in describing and mitigating fire impacts in the intermix. Productive ways of improving mitigation requirements are suggested. A stronger planning-related partnership between fire services and local government is called for. Recommendations are made in the areas of legislative improvements, applied research, and strategic fire pre-planning. The study is presented from the perspective of a retired fire management specialist who is now a County Planning Commissioner. The presence of structures in wildland areas of California has been a continuing fire problem for over 60 years. As population and development increase, so do the cost and loss impacts of wildland-structural fire. Whether structure fire spreads to wildlands, or wildland.
Parent Publication
Citation
Irwin, Robert L. 1987. Local Planning Considerations for the Wildland-Structural Intermix in the Year 2000. In: Davis, James B.; Martin, Robert E., technical coordinators. 1987. Proceedings of the Symposium on Wildland Fire 2000, April 27-30, 1987, South Lake Tahoe, California. Gen. Tech. Rep. PSW-GTR-101. Berkeley, CA: Pacific Southwest Forest and Range Experiment Station, Forest Service, U.S. Department of Agriculture; p. 38-46
