“They’re Putting All Of Us At Risk”

In 2021, State Sen. Henry Stern (D), who lost his own home in Los Angeles’s Topanga Canyon in the 2018 Woolsey Fire, was fighting in the California legislature to stop development in high-risk areas. Stern told Curbed in May 2021 that it was time for the government to tell developers, “No, you can’t build your new mansion.”

At the time, four years before the firestorm that just descended on Los Angeles, Stern was trying to pass a bill that would block most development in zones designated by the state as “very high risk” of wildfires.

California’s State Fire Marshal maps out fire risk across the state, classifying areas as at “moderate,” “high,” or “very high” risk of wildfires. These designations inform building safety standards and disclosure requirements for property sales.

In 2021, Stern’s bill would have barred development in “very high risk” zones, with exceptions for cases in which local fire agencies adopted a comprehensive plan for wildfire risk management. Without such limitations, development in these areas was likely to continue to boom; one 2014 study estimated that by 2050, a million additional houses would be built in very-high-risk wildlife zones in California. Already, there are two million homes in high and very-high-risk wildfire zones in the state.