![]() ![]() A change in federal law recently devoted funding to study the feasibility of this in places like the Sierra Nevada, and Paradise is eager for federal support. And as the West cooks in extreme drought, there's interest in replicating this in certain high risk fire zones. ![]() The federal government has been buying out people who live in high risk flood zones for almost three decades. "We're going to have to learn how to live with it in a better way and not just kind of build and hope for the best, which has been kind of the approach in the past," he says. government is spending upwards of $2 billion on fire suppression, with the primary aim of keeping flames away from homes and whole communities.Įfseaff says in Paradise there's a new mindset that the town has to be as climate and wildfire resilient as possible. But consider that the 2018 Camp Fire did about $16 billion in damage, the single most expensive disaster in the world that year. ![]() But Efseaff estimates they may need $20 million or more to have a serious impact from a wildfire prevention standpoint. So far they have acquired about 300 acres of new land, with about 500 more acres in the pipeline, mostly paid for with non profit grant money and donations. "I think it's going to make the community safer." "Every single one of these properties we're looking at from the standpoint of, what can we do to limit the spread of fire, is this a staging area," Efseaff says. Efseaff's department could strictly manage forests like this with the hopes that the next wildfire might slow down here and give firefighters a chance. That's good for adding more recreation but it could also work as a fuel break. The idea is to connect the burnt out lots to the town's existing park land. "There have been so many instances of these fires, people know that we have to do something different," he says. It's part of a new, ambitious town effort to identify the most high risk properties in the burn area and, if there are willing sellers, buy them and turn them into fire resistant green spaces. There is a legacy of loose zoning, and some people have to live in places like this because it's cheaper.ĭan Efseaff is spearheading an effort to buy high risk wildfire properties and turn them into a green space to buffer against future wildfires.īut that's precisely why Efseaff has his eye on properties like these. And while the burnt homes in this leveled neighborhood probably wouldn't have gotten permits in modern times, they're no anomaly in the libertarian rural West. ![]() It's then a right turn down a narrow, steep winding dirt road leading to the rim of the canyon where the flames entered Paradise nearly three years ago.įire trucks can't get in to protect homes in places like this because it's too dangerous. "We had some days, the sun blocked out, it was dark as night," Efseaff says, as he steers his SUV off of a highway lined on both sides by stumps from logged, charred pine trees. The Dixie Fire ignited in nearly the same place. "Quite literally, it's hanging over your head," says Dan Efseaff, director of the Paradise Recreation and District.įor many locals, seeing and smelling the smoke is a constant if ominous reminder of the 2018 Camp Fire, which killed 85 people and destroyed some 19,000 structures here. Some 40,000 trees have now been removed around Paradise.īy the heat of the afternoon, smoke from the largest wildfire burning in the U.S., the Dixie Fire, drifts into Paradise, Calif. Stumps from recently logged trees in the footprint of the deadly Camp Fire. ![]()
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