Day for Woodside Fire Protection District Board 2022

More than ever, we need the Fire District  not just to suppress fires
when they occur  but to prevent them from occurring. Cal Fire, the
National Fire Protection Association, wildfire experts, and insurers all
agree: Communities like ours must establish fire safe development and
building standards, foster broad public education, and prioritize the
roadway, power and communications improvements n

eeded to secure
our safety. A changing climate and rapidly expanding built environment makes our
past assumptions about wildfire hazard and risk increasingly outdated
and inapplicable to our future safety. While our firefighters are highly
effective in protecting us against the vast majority of fires, it is the most
severe fires, occurring under the most severe weather and drought
conditions, that increasingly pose our greatest challenge. These fires
burn under high winds, with very low fuel moistures, producing high
spread rates and intensities. While extreme weather and climatic conditions play a critical role, they
alone do not account for the destruction that’s occurring. They alone
do not cause the nearly instantaneous combustion of hundreds or even
thousands of homes as wildfire spreads into and through residential
neigborhoods in central and coastal California. We think of the buildings and homes interspersed within wildland
fuels as the unfortunate victim and not a cause of the fires that destroy
them. But homes and neighborhoods built in and among the wildlands
are not just “vulnerable” or “exposed” to wildfire; they are also often
the cause of much of its greatest destruction.