Temecula awarded $378k fire safety grant

Kim Harris

Managing Editor

The city of Temecula was awarded a $378,000 grant from Cal Fire to be used for fire prevention and safety, according to Temecula Mayor Pro Tem Matt Rahn.

“Along Temecula Creek and the I-15 corridor there, it’s a high risk for fire issues, one of the higher risk areas for us in the community,” Rahn said. “The problem with the area is there is a bit of a challenge of a hodgepodge of ownership. You have cultural resources, you have biological resources, you have watershed managements, you have homeless encampments, just everything you could possibly imagine. It’s a nexus of everything coming together.”

Rahn said that the problem is there is also a high fuel load increasing the risk of fires within that particular area.

“Navigating that landscape within either state or federal jurisdiction so that we can do the fuel reductions and to be able to get that clearance to make that part of our community safe is extremely challenging,” Rahn said.

Rahn said that the city wrote the grant request hoping to address those issues.

“This is not a unique issue just to the city of Temecula,” he said, adding that there are stories throughout the state of communities facing the same issues.

“Unfortunately, there is no real good playbook to navigate that,” he said. “The grant we wrote is exactly that, it’s to help develop that sort of playbook, if you will, to be able to address the cultural resources, water quality issues, the Riverside County Flood Protection, U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, California Fish and Wildlife, all of that, the homeless encampments the safety risk, the flood risk potential, just everything in one cohesive plan so that we can go in there and actually do the fuel reduction that’s needed.”

According to the grant, titled Temecula Creek Wildfire Risk Reduction Community Plan, the city will utilize the highest-risk and most complex property within the city as a model for how to develop comprehensive planning for other fire risk properties throughout the city, and potentially beyond. The plan will account for the “diversity of responsibilities” and balance “the needs of other land uses and protections, while ensuring the highest level of public safety and fire risk reduction.”

The area consists of a 177-acre project site which the grant said, “is in critical need of a wildfire protection plan.” The site, which is a wildland urban interface area with a very high fire hazard severity zone, is adjacent to state responsibility areas.

“This planning effort will develop the Temecula Creek Plan to provide for fire risk reduction and benefit approximately 28,491 adjacent acres including rural terrain and 3,048 habitable structures from wildland fires (the Project Influence Zone/PIZ Project Area) that could easily affect portions of six communities; four of which are designated ‘At-Risk’ for wildfires, including the City of Temecula, Pechanga Reservation, De Luz and Rainbow,” the grant said.

Rahn said that he was excited to receive the grant, which will last for three years, to put together a “cohesive strategy,” something that he understood would be the first of its kind in the state.

The goal of The Temecula Creek Plan, which will be utilized as a comprehensive planning tool and analysis framework that creates best practices and policies for planning and implementing fire management programs within the Temecula Creek and serve as a model to use for other high-risk areas throughout Temecula, and potentially beyond, is to “ameliorate the incidence of wildland and wildland urban interface fires,” according to the grant.

As part of the plan a scaling of response from small to catastrophic incidents will be developed, while also ensuring proper coordination with other land and resource considerations, including biological resources, wildlife movement, conservation easements, cultural resources, public safety, watershed/water quality, and homelessness.

Rahn said he was, “very proud of that opportunity,” as he thanked those who helped to work on the grant which he said was “extremely challenging to write.”

“The burden on the analysts to be able to demonstrate the need is really incredible,” he said. “Staff did an outstanding job pulling together a top-notch grant and I am glad to see that move forward.”

Kim Harris can be reached by email at [email protected].