Santa Cruz County’s Community Wildfire Protection Plan (CWPP) took a step forward in October with five community input meetings in Sonoita, Patagonia, Nogales, Rio Rico, and Tubac. About 40 residents attended the meeting in Patagonia on Oct. 7.
Led by the county’s Office of Emergency Management in collaboration with local fire departments and stakeholders, the CWPP will identify wildfire risk areas, mitigation strategies, and response plans for Treatment Management Units throughout the county.
Developing the Santa Cruz County CWPP is a top priority for Sobeira Castro, Director of the Office of Emergency Management. “It’s important for us to be prepared and immediately responsive in any emergency,” Castro said. “Once we have the CWPP, we can qualify for various grants,” she added.
The CWPP is well along in the development process. At the public meetings, maps were presented showing wildfire risk analysis based on over ten years of fire and hourly wind data. Around Patagonia, five mitigation priority areas are proposed to protect the town.
Work on the first one is already underway to create a fire break south of town running from The Nature Conservancy and Tucson Bird Alliance properties to the cemetery. That project is funded by the Community Wildfire Protection Grant awarded to the Tucson Bird Alliance earlier this year.
The CWPP maps and strategies focus on areas of wildland-urban interface — “the WUI” (woo-eee) in fire prevention-speak. Though eastern Santa Cruz County is rural, not urban, essentially all of our residential and business areas are considered WUIs, i.e. areas where a wildfire can easily threaten structures and lives.
The community meeting was led by Dave Richins, community outreach facilitator for the CWPP team. He highlighted the cooperation and knowledgeable input they are receiving from all of the fire departments, as well as from the Nogales and Sierra Vista districts of Coronado National Forest.
“Fire department leaders in Sonoita and Patagonia knew the high risk areas off the top of their heads,” Richins said. “The CWPP team got great information very quickly.”
Beyond area planning, neighborhood-level input is needed to identify less obvious risks, and assure viable evacuation routes. That’s the kind of input that community members shared at the October meetings: insights into places that are of concern to the community.
Richins also emphasized that successful wildfire protection is a two-part effort of community-level planning and fuels reduction, combined with firewise protection measures taken by individual property owners. Public measures without protective actions by owners will not be enough, Richins said.
Acknowledging that many owners don’t have the physical or financial resources to make firewise improvements on their property, Richins said that the completed CWPP can help communities attract grant money and organize collaborative firewise efforts.
The fire departments can educate citizens, and provide firewise assessments.
“The CWPP will give us a road map,” said Zay Hartigan, Patagonia Volunteer Fire & Rescue Chief. “We all have to walk that trail, drive that road together to make this work.”
Satellite communities—clusters of homes outside of town or fire district boundaries, whether in HOAs or not—especially need to work together to assess their risk factors, take mitigation actions, and develop evacuation and shelter-in-place plans.
Next steps
The CWPP team will finish its draft plan in early November to circulate to all fire departments for their review and sign-off. Then the plan will be presented to Santa Cruz County supervisors for review and eventual approval early next year.
Plan implementation will include a public-facing Dashboard website that will include interactive maps that incorporate the 10-plus years of historical data with wind and humidity readings to portray conditions in real-time.
Meanwhile, residents can take advantage of the cooler days to take basic firewise actions now, like clearing leaves from gutters, and removing combustible materials from within five feet of the house. More information can be found at FireWise.org