[Your Full Name]
[Your Street Address]
[City, State, ZIP Code]
[Email Address]
[Phone Number]
[Date]
[Title and name of elected official]
[email address of elected official]
Re: Concern about the deliberations of the CAL FIRE Zone 0 Advisory Committee
Dear [Title and name of elected official],
I am writing to express my concern about the recent deliberations of the CAL FIRE Zone 0 Advisory Committee. The Committee has faced a large amount of pushback from massive disinformation campaigns in parts of San Francisco Bay and Southern California that are facing local Zone 0 ordinances. These disinformation campaigns, driven by a wish to make no changes to existing private landscapes, are pressuring the Committee to ignore the science and weaken the regulations necessary to prevent wildfires. A similar disinformation campaign was recently successful in Oregon: How Oregon’s Wildfire Risk Map Became a Target for Misinformation — ProPublica.
The science is clear: as indicated by Governor Newsom’s Executive Order N-18-25, the area within five feet of a structure is the most critical to structure ignition during a wildfire. A very large consensus of wildfire scientists testifying in front of this committee supports Zone 0 science, and every firefighting professional testifying in front of this committee has endorsed strict Zone 0 defensible space requirements.
However, in the last two meetings, as the pressure and participation from disinformation campaigns have increased, members of the Committee have expressed more willingness to weaken these regulations. At the last meeting, a member of the Committee, who is also chair of the Regulatory Affairs Advisory Committee for a logging company, expressed her wish to allow vegetation in Zone 0 for everyone, and all members of the committee discussed their willingness to allow more wood products in the construction of fences within Zone 0—when the presence of any combustible material goes directly counter to all the evidence presented. Baseless social media-driven disinformation campaigns do not replace science. With California facing longer and more intense fire seasons and more record-setting fires, strict Zone 0 guidelines—including the removal of all combustible vegetation and materials immediately adjacent to structures—are both reasonable and essential for community resilience. The also match the requirements of the insurance industry and IBHS’s research and guidelines.
I am greatly concerned to see the Committee weaken originally discussed regulations for Zone 0 enforcement. The implementation and enforcement of Zone 0 and Zone 1 together, starting in 2026, may represent a true inflection point in the history of disasters in California. Future generations may decide that we did not do enough in this step: they will certainly not judge that we did too much.
I live in the WUI. I don’t want to leave my home. In the past years wildfire risk in my neighborhood has exploded, and it has become exceedingly difficult to get insurance. The survival of my house and possibly my life depend upon the decisions that the Committee will take: they are existential for me. If the final Committee regulations are not strong enough to allow my neighborhood to survive a wildfire, it may well convince me to relocate despite my wishes.
Please urge the Committee to stand firm against any efforts to weaken these requirements, and be counted among those who made a difference to California.
Thank you for your leadership on this critical issue.
Sincerely,
[Your Full Name]
[Optional: Title or Affiliation]