In a letter from the Senate Appropriations Committee, Cal Fire estimated it would cost more than $100 million a year to build its own model to assess and forecast risk. SB 326 would have allowed the agency to use an off-the-shelf model for around $20 million a year.
Estimates of what it would take to accomplish strategic planning, meanwhile, have varied significantly. In the 2024 version of the bill, Cal Fire estimated the cost around $12 million. But in the version proposed just a year earlier, which would have tasked the Office of Emergency Services with forecasting and planning, OES estimated the cost of complying to be under $3 million per year (PDF). The 2023 bill died in committee and faced opposition from the Cal Fire employees union, which objected to fire-related jobs being given to a different department.
“I think [SB 326] would have saved money, not cost money for the state of California,” said Michael Wara, climate and energy expert at Stanford and an advocate for the bill.
Since the 2017 North Bay fires, he said, utility companies have made a lot of progress on safety, and after the 2018 Camp Fire, they were required to create comprehensive mitigation plans. But without the need to holistically look at risk and plan for safety in fire-prone neighborhoods, Wara said, California has made comparatively little progress on making communities more resilient to wildfires.
“That is just as important as the utility safety side,” he said. “Where we are is not OK. It should not be acceptable to any Californian. And we need to make progress — measurable progress — at a much faster rate.”
SB 326, which passed through committees and both houses without a single no vote, was supported by the insurance industry and insurance regulators.
While Becker has not committed to reintroducing a new version next year, he acknowledges the issue is only growing more urgent — especially as the costs of wildfires become stratospheric. Damage from this year’s Los Angeles fires, for example, is estimated to be over $100 billion.