passed<\/a> by the City Council in June to help mitigate wildfire risk in Berkeley by requiring properties in zones with high fire risk to keep flammable materials and vegetation at least 5 feet away from the property.\u00a0<\/p>\nColin Arnold, the assistant fire chief to the city of Berkeley, said this will specifically impact property in and around Panoramic Hill, Grizzly Peak and Tilden Regional Park. There are a number of co-op and greek life houses on Panoramic Hill, between Memorial Stadium and Clark Kerr Campus.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Arnold also noted that the Berkeley Fire Department\u2019s grant from CAL FIRE will be used to assist those who cannot afford to adjust their properties to meet EMBER standards. He said any resident who can demonstrate need based on age, finances or ability can receive $2,900 per property, which can be used to bring properties up to code.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe\u2019re also, as we have been in the past, really invested in working with folks.\u201d Arnold said. \u201cThere\u2019s not much value in showing up and drawing a hard line for people that can\u2019t do the work. That doesn\u2019t get us anywhere. So there\u2019s normally a fairly flexible strategy, and we work with residents on that.\u201d<\/p>\n
Arnold noted that the Fire Department doesn\u2019t expect every property to be in full compliance by June 2026 when inspections will be conducted, but that the City Council and the Fire Department have been trying to prepare residents for the EMBER initiative\u2019s implementation. The Fire Department has sent letters to property owners and offered walk-throughs of yards to check for compliance and possible fire risks. The city also offered workshops on EMBER implementation.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Sarah Lana, the emergency manager for the city of Berkeley, spoke to the importance of not only fire mitigation strategies such as EMBER but also plans to get residents out of danger if a wildfire were to occur. The city conducted the Evacuation Time Study, which found that the city may be underprepared to transport residents out of the city during an emergency evacuation.\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u201cWe know that if we have a catastrophic wildfire, that we are not going to be able to move people out as fast as we would like,\u201d Lana said.\u00a0<\/p>\n
She said most of the city\u2019s evacuation plans have focused on home owners and renters, and not students. However, the city is working with campus to better understand issues that students may face in regards to planning for an evacuation.\u00a0<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"A number of student co-op and greek life houses in Berkeley are in a \u201cvery high fire zone,\u201d…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":67584,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[34],"tags":[40178,6980,13775,40179,40175,19083,40181,40177,143,145,144,40176,40180],"class_list":["post-67583","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-oakland","tag-and-tilden-regional-park","tag-cal-fire","tag-cecilia-lunaparra","tag-colin-arnold","tag-effective-mitigations-for-berkeleys-ember-resilience","tag-ember","tag-evacuation-time-study","tag-grizzly-peak","tag-oakland","tag-oakland-headlines","tag-oakland-news","tag-panoramic-hill","tag-sarah-lana-berkeley"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/67583","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=67583"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/67583\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/67584"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=67583"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=67583"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=67583"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}