Thoughts on preventing Santa Barbara from burning like the Palisades

Seeing Pacific Palisades burn to the ground has made me worried about our vulnerability to a similar event here in Santa Barbara. We’ve had a number of large fires over the years: - 1925 earthquake fire - 1964 Coyote fire - 1977 Sycamore Canyon - 1990 Painted Cave - 2008 Gap and Tea - 2009 Jesusita - 2017 Thomas - 2021 Alisal

Reading back over some of these events like the debris flow after the Coyote fire, it sounded so similar to the 2018 debris flow. History repeats itself, and with climate change it’s worse each time.

I feel like we’re sitting ducks here and am wondering what can be done to make us more resilient. This is what I think of:

  1. Underground all electric wires in Santa Barbara including in the mountains. This will be a huge cost but it must be done and the cost will be passed on via increases in electricity rates. Will have the side effect of encouraging more solar installations as customers try to avoid paying for electricity from the utility, which will also increase resilience.
  2. Require all houses in high fire risk zones (as defined by the existing GIS map) to install a water system that incorporates an underground cistern and/or connection to a pool with outdoor, roof mounted sprinklers. Citizens that choose to live in high fire areas put an undue burden on the rest of the community who have to pay for a bloated fire department that is responsible for protecting those structures. Forcing them to have adequate sprinkler protection, sourced by an independent water supply so that city water doesn’t lose pressure in an emergency is only fair. The cistern must be able to collect rainwater and graywater, and it must connect to the irrigation system. Large backup battery is required to have pumping if power is off. Tie it to permitting similar to the sewer lateral permitting: I.e. you can’t reroof or remodel unless you install your fire protection system.
  3. Require new construction to follow passive house design as a stricter fire code and energy efficiency.
  4. Install sprinklers along fire/telephone access roads that can help break and slow the fire

Note than I’m not well informed and have no connections to firefighters so I’m just pondering what we could do.

What do think about these ideas above and what would be more effective?