On March 24th, a special Public Safety Committee meeting was held at City Council to discuss the Modification and Adoption of Berkeley Fire Code Local Amendments, namely EMBER. Fire Chief Sprague was the presenter of the item.
Members of the Committee include Councilmembers Brent Blackaby (District 6), Shoshana O’Keefe (District 5), and Rashi Kesarwani (District 1). The Committee Chair is Councilmember Blackaby.
The meeting was two hours long and focused on the new fire zone maps (an important subject which is not covered here) and what work/actions we can take to best reduce our community-wide risk of an urban conflagration. Approximately five people attended in-person and more by Zoom.
Fire Chief Sprague spoke on a concept we are familiar with by now – how a fire will search and find the weakest link, exploiting all vulnerabilities. So the best chance of minimizing fire loss is by:
Mitigating Fuel Beds around Structures (Zone Zero to prevent ember ignition)
Home hardening
He went on to say that we are currently an unmitigated community. Where we want to be is a mitigated community – where the number of firefighting resources (including our wildfire mitigation efforts) is equal to or greater than structure fires.
If Council passes EMBER, Sprague said that significant resources will be available to residents in our area to do wildfire mitigation.
There is a $1 million+ grant from CalFire as well as local grants, Measure FF, private donations, etc. Financial support will be given to residents >65-years-old and/or low income, with details to follow.
There will be a clear roadmap with educational seminars and other outreach on what to do for Zone Zero and basic home hardening retrofits (gutter guards, etc.). The latter are low cost, high-impact retrofits.
BFD plans to collapse all their efforts into the 850 homes in the proposed Grizzly Peak Mitigation Zone (that’s us, east of GP to Wildcat) and the other VHFHSZ which is Panoramic Hill.
Grizzly Peak and Panoramic are considered the “Key Buffer Zones.”
BFD will not do the regular inspections of 9000 homes planned for the spring/summer if EMBER passes, but rather focus entirely on Grizzly Peak and Panoramic.
All WUI staff and programs will be collapsed into supporting wildfire mitigation efforts in 2026 to 2027. This effort is referred to as Phase 1.
“Grizzly Peak Mitigation Zone and Panoramic are the most important areas in the city and where we need to invest and partner with residents, now…if we don’t stop it here we will have an Altadena-type situation.”
The goal is 85% compliance.
All attendees (by phone and in-person) and the three councilmembers were in strong support of the fire code amendments (EMBER). Councilmember Keserwani expressed her appreciation of the Chief’s proactive leadership on this issue.
Blackaby and O’Keefe voted Aye; Keserwani abstained (she wanted more info on financial support for the elderly and citations). The item now moves to the full City Council on April 15th.
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