Fire season is here and San Fernando Valley feels the heat

A bit of unkempt brush or a debris-filled gutter can be all it takes for a wildfire to engulf a home. As this year’s wildfire season heats up, experts in this field say it’s crucial for San Fernando Valley residents to be prepared, and the California Office of Emergency Services, as well as the Los Angeles Fire Department, are working to educate locals.

Tens of thousands of Angelenos live in areas designated by state officials as Very High Fire Hazard Severity Zones and many developed residential areas of the Valley are in the fire hazard zone.

The zone includes parts of neighborhoods that range from Studio City to Encino to Woodland Hills along the south edge of the Valley, and range from Porter Ranch to Chatsworth and Sylmar along the north edge of the Valley, and range from Tujunga to Sun Valley on the east.

Mark Seigel, a resident of Tujunga, has seen blazes reach one-quarter of a mile from his home, and many of his neighbors’ homes have been damaged in wildfires. Seigel operates a non-commercial “ham” radio as a way to communicate during emergencies, and so do many of his fellow Tujunga residents.

“We always try to be prepared for emergencies,” Seigel said. “We’ve had some really, really ugly fires. But we try to help each other out.”

Cindy Cleghorn, a member of the Tujunga Neighborhood Council, recalls evacuating during a wildfire as she drove down the 210 freeway and she could feel the intense, radiating flames on either side of her car as the flames engulfed the surrounding wildlands.

It was her knowledge of how and when to get out that saved her and her neighbors’ lives.

“The fires don’t have a direct path and they hop and move, so you have to be prepared as best as you can,” Cleghorn said. “That’s really important. And you have to know your neighbors and work together.”

According to the state Office of Emergency Services Fire and Rescue Chief Brian Marshall, Californians gearing up for wildfire season should pack an emergency go-bag, prepare their property and make a plan for evacuation.

“If there’s smoke in the air, it’s too late,” Marshall said in a May interview. “You have to have a plan. It’s an opportunity for a family to sit down on a Saturday afternoon and develop a plan.”

Marshall said families should have an emergency supply kit ready and filled with essentials such as medications, important documents and non-perishable food. Trimming shrubs and trees year-round is important, and so is having multiple routes to take in case your household needs to evacuate.

“We stress having multiple ways to exit your community and get out safe,” Marshall said. “Because we see too often, everybody, we’re creatures of habit. We go out on the road that we go on every day. And people get caught in a firestorm because that’s the way that they drive every day. So it’s looking at some of those little things.”

Typically, peak wildfire season in the Los Angeles area is June through December, with a sharp increase in blazes during the windy autumn months, according to LAFD Captain Erik Scott.

Scott said nurturing fire-resistant plants—such as lilac or sumac shrubs—is especially important in Southern California.

“Incorporate fire-resistant plants in your landscaping to enhance your home’s wildfire defense,” Scott said in a May interview. “These plants are less prone to ignition. They add an extra layer of safety while keeping your garden looking good.”

As climate change exacerbates summer heat levels and dries out the landscape, Southern California’s peak wildfire season continues to encompass more and more of the year, according to CoreLogic Spatial Solutions senior hazard scientist Tom Jeffery, who has researched wildfires for more than 20 years.

“What that means is that the period of time where you would have the expectation of having precipitation, kind of that late fall to early winter time, where you get some rain, that gets pushed back a week, two weeks, three weeks,” Jeffery said.

“It doesn’t have to be a long time, and all of a sudden, you have this horrible confluence of things happening, which is you have all of the drying that occurred during the summer, you have the rain pushed back a couple of weeks and you have the Santa Ana winds starting to crop up,” Jeffery said. “Now you have a massive fire.”

Many San Fernando Valley and nearby communities are located in the wildfire-prone Wildland Urban Interface (WUI, pronounced woo-ee), the areas where homes and businesses mix with undeveloped wildland.

Most of the WUI communities in the city of Los Angeles encircle the Valley, including Chatsworth, Woodland Hills, Griffith Park, Porter Ranch, Encino, Sherman Oaks, Bel Air and Hollywood Hills. But they also include more urban communities like Silverlake, Baldwin Hills and Montecito Heights.

Continued development in the WUI contributes to increasing wildfire risks, according to Jeffery.

Jeffery authored a wildfire risk report last year for CoreLogic that named Los Angeles the number one metro area for risk of wildfire property damage in the United States.

According to the report, the Los Angeles metro area has more than 240,000 homes at risk to wildfires, and the associated reconstruction costs if it all burned would total $183 billion.

The report notes that the nationwide average number of acres burned between 2010 to 2022 is 93% higher than the average acreage that burned between 1990 and 2000.

Los Angeles City Councilmember Monica Rodriguez—whose father was a firefighter—shares the importance of wildfire preparation with her constituents and has hosted emergency training events. She  represents Council District 7, which includes many neighborhoods in the WUI including Lake View Terrace, Pacoima, Shadow Hills, Sunland-Tujunga and Sylmar.

“It’s about the safety of all Angelenos in these emergencies, and I want to make sure that we minimize the fear,” Rodriguez said in a June interview. “If we’re exercising these processes then we will together have a safer response. Because the worst thing you can do is panic in an emergency.”

Rodriguez serves as chair of the City Council’s public safety committee, which has worked to repave roads in high-risk areas and conduct hillside brush clearances.

“I know how important it is to make sure that we create space for the first responders to do their job,” Rodriguez said. “I think it’s important for us living in the city of Los Angeles to understand, it’s not if we have an emergency, it’s when we have an emergency.”

Porter Ranch Neighborhood Council President Becky Leveque has experienced five wildfire evacuations during her 45 years living there. Porter Ranch is in the WUI, and Leveque said ongoing brush clearance has been key for her community to stay safe.

“Porter Ranch has been built out so much that we really do have to be careful with all of that,” Leveque said. “We are very vigilant about protecting ourselves. It’s important to be vigilant and trim your trees and do hillside clearance.”

Cleghorn, who also lives in the WUI, often weighs wildfire risks when discussing proposed developments through her role on the Tujunga Neighborhood Council land use committee.

“We typically see cases when they require some sort of special approval by the city,” Cleghorn said. “Typically they’ll be in a very windy, hillside area or have a lot of trees. We see the density in the surrounding area and if it’s more than it can handle.”

Chief Marshall said that if a wildfire situation comes down to an evacuation order, residents should leave homes and property behind and follow official directions.

“You may be told to evacuate. We strongly recommend that when you get an evacuation order, you heed that order and you get out, because it’s going to save your life,” Marshall said. “Your house can be rebuilt.”

To sign up for fire alerts in the City of Los Angeles, go here: https://member.everbridge.net/index/892807736729789/#/signup

To share LAFD’s state-created map of severe fire zones in Los Angeles, go here: https://www.lafd.org/fire-prevention/brush/fire-zone/fire-zone-map