Richmond Fire Chief Aaron Osorio advocated for community education over enforcement when it comes to city properties that are at risk for wildland fires.
The chief made this recommendation at Richmond City Council on Tuesday while summarizing how his department is addressing the potential for destructive wildfires, a topic that is on everyone’s minds amid the devastating Greater Los Angeles wildfires.
The City Council voted to form an ad-hoc committee of councilmembers and city staff to work on wildfire preparedness and mitigation, to conduct community outreach and to assess what is needed to best prepare city neighborhoods impacted by wildfires, including possible enforcement on at risk properties.Â
Chief Osorio says a lot is already being done in terms of wildfire preparedness in the city. He advocated to increase community education on wildfire risks, prevention and response, particularly at a time when the nation’s attention is on the subject.
“I think we need to balance what we’re seeing on TV, what we’re seeing in the media,” the chief said. “There’s a lot of misinformation that has gone on about how [the Greater LA fires were] handled. So I think really being able to have the community be able to ask questions would solve a lot of the concerns.”
According to the state, areas designated within the “high severity zone” for wildfires exist primarily in the Carriage Hills and May Valley areas of Richmond. Areas considered at high risk for wildfires encompass about 8 percent of the city, Chief Osorio said. He noted other areas of the city face different emergency risks, such as industrial incidents, shoreline and marine responses and the impacts of earthquakes including liquefaction.
These are all addressed with limited resources — the RFD has just one member in its emergency services staff, Osorio said. That staff member is busy training city staff, coordinating drills, aiming to start a Community Emergency Response Team (CERT) Academy and attending community meetings.
“And so we have to try to spread our resources and our efforts across all of these different types of risks,” he said.
While municipal code contains language to enable the city to enforce vegetation management in high severity zones, Chief Osorio said the RFD has “never gone to that measure” and would only do so in the most extreme cases where RFD cannot gain compliance. The chief noted that enforcement would require multiple city departments to examine each case and the possibility for appeals of those cases. He believes community education is the better investment.
“We’ve relied on education to get compliance up until now,” said the chief. “There are portions of that process that do need to be hammered out in case we ever have to have something that has more force behind it to enforce these things, but we’ve really relied on trying to educate members in the community to get compliance when you live in the wildland interface.”
The chief added he doesn’t want there to be a perception that wildfire risks are ignored in the city. He pointed to the city’s website that includes a resource page for wildfire preparedness. A community wildfire prevention plan was adopted by the city in 2020, replacing the 1995 ordinance. Last year, the RFD conducted over 2,900 parcel inspections in very high fire severity zones of the city. Some of the inspections are state mandated.
Chief Osorio added that city firefighters train regularly, gearing up for peak wildfire season on firefighting techniques, and that the RFD is part of the Office of Emergency Services structure to receive mass mutual aid within the state upon request. The RFD also participates in Cal Fire meetings to ensure mutual aid responses in the case of large scale incidents, he said.
The chief says he personally lives in a home that has been threatened by four wildfires in the last two years. He believes the responsibility for protecting homes ultimately falls on the property owner.
He further expressed distress over the ongoing home insurance crisis. Even with the best possible compliance and preparedness, residents still face the uncertainty of having their insurance premiums skyrocket or their plans dropped, the chief said. With the progressing impacts of climate change, he says the best that can be done now, while the public is attentive to wildfire risks, is to double-down on community education.
“We can benefit more in terms of time and investment from education,” he said.
