In the wake of the devastating Los Angeles fires in January 2025, an independent group of experts, in partnership with UCLA, released a report recommending improvements to wildfire management and rebuilding, including establishing a single agency to coordinate wildfire mitigation efforts across LA County. That Blue Ribbon Commission report prompted SPUR to examine coordination and funding of regional wildfire mitigation in the Bay Area and to explore opportunities to improve management strategies. In Shared Risk, Shared Resilience: Cross-jurisdictional governance for wildfire mitigation, Hazard Resilience Senior Policy Manager Sarah Atkinson and Sustainability and Resilience Policy Manager Colleen Corrigan find that jurisdictions with shared wildfire risk areas could significantly improve resilience by establishing coordinating entities. We asked them about the governance models they studied, how wildfire risk is managed in California, and how this research may support action on other climate hazards.
Who manages wildfire mitigation in California and the Bay Area, and what are the challenges in reducing wildfire risks?
Wildfire management efforts in California are implemented through a complex network of federal, state, and local agencies, each with distinct and overlapping responsibilities. Federal responsibility areas cover about 50% of the state’s land area and are managed by agencies like the U.S. Forest Service and the National Park Service. The Department of Forestry and Fire Protection (CAL FIRE), oversees state responsibility areas — including both private and public lands — which encompass a third of California. City and county fire departments manage local responsibility areas in coordination with the State Fire Marshal, which operates under CAL FIRE. As a regulatory agency, CAL FIRE sets and enforces standards for building safety and develops fire hazard severity zone maps for both state and local responsibility areas. Despite increased state funding for wildfire mitigation over the last decade, challenges persist, particularly in coordination among state and local government agencies.
What collaborative models are in place to address wildfire resilience in the Bay Area, and how do they differ in terms of structure, funding, and effectiveness in mitigating wildfire risks?
In our report, we highlighted two noteworthy collaborative governance models addressing shared wildfire risks: the Marin Wildfire Prevention Authority (MWPA) and the East Bay Wildfire Coalition of Governments (EBWC). These models illustrate different approaches to cross-jurisdictional coordination and financing.
The MWPA is a formal joint powers authority funded through a countywide parcel tax. This structure allows for coordinated efforts across its 17 member agencies, including cities, towns, and fire districts. The MWPA focuses on community-scale mitigation, vegetation management, and public education. With significant funding — approximately $20 million annually — the MWPA can implement long-term wildfire mitigation strategies effectively.
In contrast, the EBWC operates under a semi-formal memorandum of understanding and relies on member dues for funding, limiting its financial resources to about $75,000 annually. The EBWC emphasizes cross-jurisdictional project partnerships, public outreach, building code enforcement, and policy advocacy. While it fosters collaboration, its lack of a dedicated funding source hinders the scale of its initiatives.
Ultimately, while the MWPA benefits from robust funding and structured governance, the less formal EBWC model still offers a flexible framework for cross-jurisdictional coordination and planning. The two models showcase the importance of tailoring or phasing approaches to wildfire management in different contexts.
Where do the MWPA and the EBWC fit into the transition from individual property-level planning to a collaborative community-scale approach to wildfire risk management?
A single homeowner may harden their house, but fire spreads across properties, embers can travel miles, and the condition of nearby structures and landscapes often shapes the risk of a home igniting. Entities such as the MWPA and the EBWC play a crucial role in the transition to community-scale resilience by facilitating cooperation among stakeholders, including government agencies, tribes, property owners, and voters. These entities help navigate the complexities of risk management and serve as trusted messengers, advocating for wildfire mitigation and insurability. By doing so, they build public support for mitigation investments such as Zone Zero techniques — removing all vegetation within a five-foot buffer around a building. This is a tough sell to some homeowners, but it can reduce the destructiveness of wildfires by as much as 50% and can reduce structure losses by 17%.
The concept of shared risk inherently demands shared responsibility; when communities work together, they can effectively pool limited resources to enhance resilience at a community scale. MWPA’s Zone Zero in a Box program is a great example of how entities can connect homeowners with financial assistance and planning resources to implement a state policy, ensuring that no home is left behind.
With or without collaborative entities, your report recommends that counties and cities adopt more progressive wildfire-resilience policies. What kinds of policies?
Local authorities can minimize local wildfire risks by restricting new development in high fire areas, expanding CAL FIRE’s Fire Hazard Severity Zones to address local conditions, requiring home hardening upgrades or vegetation removal ahead of state Zone Zero requirements (which have been repeatedly delayed), or dedicating funding to vegetation management. Oakland’s Measure MM (2024), supported by voters, implemented a parcel tax in the Oakland hills for wildfire management activities. Berkeley's new EMBER Initiative requires a five-foot ember-resistant zone around buildings, and the Town of Paradise recently updated its building codes to align with wildfire-preparedness standards, hoping to attract insurance providers back after the 2018 Camp Fire.
As you can see, some jurisdictions have already advanced progressive wildfire policies to protect residents and property from wildfires. However, other jurisdictions have experienced significant opposition due to both perceived and real costs of things like home upgrades or Zone Zero. A recent ordinance from the Moraga-Orinda Fire District mandating the removal of combustible materials around structures was reduced from five feet (which followed Zone Zero guidance) to two feet due to opposition. Without significant investments in public education, political limitations could pose a barrier to effective wildfire mitigation.
And that takes us to one of the hottest topics in the wake of the LA fires: the high cost and, in some places, lack of home insurance coverage. What’s the answer to these problems?
While a 2022 rule mandates insurers to offer discounts to homeowners for mitigation measures, these discounts are often minimal and inconsistent. Right now, insurers often work in isolation, lacking access to up-to-date data on the effectiveness of mitigation actions such as Zone Zero or home hardening improvements. A more effective approach could mirror Colorado’s recent legislation requiring insurers to factor both household and community resilience efforts into underwriting and pricing. The California Department of Insurance should empower the Insurance Institute for Business & Home Safety to facilitate collaboration between insurers and local fire agencies or coordinating entities like EBWC and MWPA. Fostering such partnerships can lead to more comprehensive risk assessments, prioritization of mitigation efforts, improved insurance coverage, and better community resilience.
Additionally, initiatives like the Wildland-Urban Interface Data Commons could revolutionize how wildfire mitigation data is shared, enabling insurers and fire professionals to work together more effectively. By cultivating transparent relationships and leveraging data, California can improve insurance market stability and enhance community wildfire resilience.
Climate change is increasing the Bay Area’s disaster risks, from wildfires to extreme heat to sea level rise and coastal flooding. How do the challenges and solutions outlined in this report apply to other hazards?
As the Bay Area seeks to act — despite significant funding pullbacks from the federal government — gaps in cross-jurisdictional governance and sustainable financing have emerged. For sea level rise adaptation, Senate Bill 272 (2023) requires local jurisdictions to develop a sea level rise plan that follows guidance from the Bay Conservation and Development Commission’s Regional Shoreline Adaptation Plan. Although this bill helped address a regional governance gap, its implementation has revealed additional governance and financing gaps, especially the need for cross-jurisdictional governance structures to advance effective planning, grant applications, and project implementation.
Existing cross-jurisdictional governance structures — for example, OneShoreline, a special-purpose district focused on flood and sea-level rise resilience in San Mateo County — have made major contributions to adaptation but require additional (sustainable) funding to expand their coordination and project implementation capabilities. Financing tools such as the Forest Resilience Bond and the LA Resilience Delta Fund, originally designed for wildfire mitigation, could be adapted to address the Bay Area’s sea-level-rise adaptation needs. Multi-hazard resilience districts, for example, can raise revenue over a larger geography and increase the pool of taxpayers and stakeholders contributing funding for investments in mitigation and response.
California’s climate threats and adaptation costs reveal interdependencies across jurisdictions, infrastructure, economic sectors, and communities. Our governance and financing solutions must reflect this reality.