Making neighborhoods safer from wildfires through new wildfire resilience tool
SACRAMENTO - A new tool is aiming to make neighborhoods safer from wildfires by linking state agencies together. It's a new database that looks at how wildfire prevention projects are going.
It's called the Interagency Treatment Dashboard, a new tool created by the Governor's Wildfire and Forest Resilience Task Force.
The dashboard acts as a hub to see all projects in progress and past aimed at preventing wildfires.
Director of the Governor's Wildfire and Forest Resilience Task Force Patrick Wright said it helps coordinate and unify agencies in a way that has not been done before.
"The public and others will see firsthand everything that has been done by federal, state, local, tribal, and private entities throughout the entire year," Wright said.
Agencies such as Cal Fire, the U.S. Forest Service, the Department of Transportation, the Bureau of Land Management, and several others are involved, posting information and data on what projects they are working on from its location, size, and who owns the land.
Tracking projects such as prescribed burns, targeted grazing, uneven-aged timber harvest, mechanical and hand fuels reduction, and tree planting.
"For the first time, if you are Caltrans and you are thinning trees along a highway, you will become aware of a state park project that might be a half a mile away or utility project that might be two miles away. You can begin linking those projects and those entities can start working together to scale up their efforts in a more coordinated way," Wright said.
Wright said every year agencies have one million acres of land to treat annually -- and this tool can help coordinate projects, combine efforts and track work in a new way.
Anyone can access the site, including the public to see what work is being done and where the funding is going.
"Our goal is for the public to have a snapshot of every thirty-meter parcel in the state of California that will tell you the condition of that parcel, what projects have been recently done on that parcel and what projects are planned," Wright said.
The new tool can also be an asset to firefighters with any new fire that starts.
"To put in the hands of first responders and firefighters up-to-date information on what land around an existing fire have just been treated or not, that is very valuable information for firefighters to know to predict where fires are going to go. It makes a big difference in the spread of fires," Wright said.
Although 2023's fire season has been quieter than past, he said the time to prevent fires is now and tracking the progress of these projects is key.
"We still have a lot of work to do. This is a huge leap forward in helping the public understand not only where projects are taking place but how effective they are," Wright said.
He said the dashboard is a step in statewide actions addressing California's wildfire crisis and is a key deliverable of the Governor's Wildfire and Forest Resilience Action Plan, issued by the Task Force in January 2021.
The beta version of the dashboard is available now and includes 2022 data. The official launch of the updated dashboard is expected in the Spring 2024.
