Why doesn’t California treat its wildfire hazards like it battles flood risks?

Jan. 04--Flooding has never been reason enough to halt development in California. Instead, flood control was embraced as a way to keep progress moving ahead.

So why should wildfires curtail development?

California wildfires scorched 1.9 million acres last year -- as much land as Delaware and Rhode Island combined -- destroying thousands of California homes and killing more than 100 people. The fires sparked lots of conversation about banning or restricting new home construction in high-risk fire zones.

But this anti-building rhetoric runs in the face of how California has historically tackled other natural disasters, specifically floods. Instead of curbing construction, the state tapped government protections for homeowners and grew its population and economy to be the nation's largest.

Don't get me wrong, the state's wildfire risks are very real. Full disclosure: Wildfires strike home for me, too. For the past quarter-century, I've lived in a one of those fire-prone community in south Orange County's foothills. I know we can do better to protect citizens from such fires, one of the many natural hazards that confront many of us who call California home.

There's a serious need for prevention and mitigation efforts to be incorporated into modern real state planning -- from neighborhood design to building codes to brush maintenance and risk-education for residents.

Many Californians are at risk. According to real estate tracker CoreLogic, 32 percent of properties statewide have flood danger vs. 8.3 percent with wildfire concerns. But CoreLogic analysts emphasize the large difference of destructiveness: Typically, wildfires result in total losses for homes while flood damage is more modest.

But in a state where housing is seen as an economic priority, who should pay to significantly lower wildfire risk?

Like many infrastructure needs, today's world seems to demand new properties owners pay for much of development's costs.

That typically includes basic and expected infrastructure expenses -- community roads, water, sewage, electricity, etc. But the tab often also encompasses paying for much of the broader, growing neighborhood needs, too -- schooling, first responders, connection roads and recreation. New neighborhoods also can be forced to build (and pay for) rainwater collection tools to lower the flood control burdens downstream.

Should wildfire protection be treated in this pay-if-you-come way, too, when another huge real estate risk -- flood -- is managed with public funds? And don't forget another flooding hazard: the costs of keeping the ocean from chewing up seaside real estate.

Wildfire management is a classic example of how Californian opinion on development has changed. In those overly revered early boom times, government dollars were invested in building the community infrastructure to get folks to move to California: everything from schools to fire stations to boulevards and ballfields. Oh, and flood control.

Today, many of those costs are foisted on the families who want to settle in a new community -- driving housing costs skyward. Is that fair?

Ponder California's long-time residents. Homeowners benefited from various forms of community-building efforts once paid for by the government. Oh, and their property taxes are low, thanks to Proposition 13. And if they're "flatlanders" living in the region's basins, well, their housing stays dry thanks to huge government-funded flood-control spending.

A history lesson

First of all, California's topography isn't kind to human habitation, even as it houses nearly 40 million people.

Sky-high and relatively lush mountains -- with typically heavy snowpack -- have steep foothills below that adjoin low-lying basins too close to the ocean. It's a watery recipe for frequent springtime floods. It means an untamed Santa Ana River, for example, would be one of the nation's biggest flood risks.

The geological misfortunes translate to a long-running headache for California. One of the first written accounts of California floods was in Spanish missionary Father Juan Crespi's diary detailing the livability challenges of the unsettled Los Angeles basin in 1769-70.

And do you remember the Great Flood of 1862?

The history books remind us that late that winter it rained for almost a month straight. The state's topography isn't built to hold that much water.

Thankfully, California was sparsely populated back then.

Reports say the rushing Santa Ana River overflowed, wiping out farming enclaves between the San Bernardino Mountains and Orange County. As the flood waters approached the ocean, they created a huge inland lake -- swamping much of what today is Santa Ana and Anaheim.

Up north, Sacramento was so overwhelmed with water that state government moved to San Francisco. And governing became tricky; estimates at the time suggested one-quarter of the states' taxable property was destroyed and shrinking tax collections nearly bankrupted the state.

Fast forward to winter 1938 as California was starting to gain traction as an economic powerhouse.

Five days of heavy rain in Southern California basin pushed the Los Angeles and Santa Ana rivers over their banks. The Ventura River was said to have grown to nearly a mile in width. More than a hundred people died across the region. Thousands of structures were destroyed.

River-close towns north of L.A. and in the Inland Empire were devastated. In places such as Santa Ana and Compton, thriving neighborhoods were turned into lakes.

Transportation was a mess. Local rail lines -- yes, those trollies -- were damaged. Interstate travel -- it was rail in that era -- was cut off. In some communities, life was so impassable the Coast Guard helped with mail delivery.

A rapid response

The same waters that fueled the state's agricultural legacy often turn destructive and deadly.

And after 1938 there was no ban on expansion -- rather an expensive, development of massive flood-control measures that have been amplified over the years.

Much of the financial burden of such projects that greatly muted flood risks were not placed on the individual property owners in flood-prone neighborhoods. Rather, the tab was typically spread amongst regional, state and federal taxpayers.

All this infrastructure cannot fully protect all Californians. But flood risks are still so collectively high that most private insurers won't offer a policy against such a watery risk. So, it's left to the federally backed National Flood Insurance Program to be the primary financial backstop for flood risks. Its policies paid 11,483 Californians a total of $219 million from 1996-2016.

The bottom line is that if it wasn't for all this government support, the risks of having real estate and related assets frequently washed away would have cooled what became monumental statewide development.

Nothing symbolizes that post-1938 flood-control push more than the Prado Dam where the Santa Ana River snakes past the edge of the Saddleback Mountains at the border of Orange and Riverside counties. That project alone made a major dent in flood risks, but other lower-profile work -- strengthening river beds with concrete and streamlining river flow -- helped throttle what would be flooding in years to come.

That safety net protected the region for what was judged to be a one-in-50-year flood. But killer floods in 1969 prompted a move to basically double the level of protection.

There was a rough doubling-down on the size of the Prado Dam. And then there's the addition of the Seven Oaks Dam on the Santa Ana River near Mentone. It's a half-billion-bucks of walls up to 50-stories high protecting an estimated 2 million properties by keeping mountain rainwater from ever reaching the Prado Dam.

The bottom line

Let's tackle wildfire risk like we fought floods.

Be proactive and smart. Don't view wildfire suppression with some sort of cost-containment logic. Invest in mitigation and firefighting not only on an event-by-event basis but with long-term vision.

Challenge government and industry alike to find new ways to lower the hazard. Let's spend to have resources -- man and material -- ready so begging isn't required when misfortune strikes.

If investment means taxpayer dollars are going to create permanent firebreaks or the like to protect homes as we did with concreting river bottoms for floods, so be it. If wildness must be pruned, let's do it.

See the costs as worthwhile insurance, not wasteful spending.

Think fire, think flood. The Seven Oaks Dam protects us from a watery disaster that might hit, say, once in a 100 years. Who'll complain if that protection is never used?

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