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- Written by: Elizabeth Larson
At its meeting last Tuesday, the board received an extensive report on the Community Development Department’s enforcement of the ordinance from Code Enforcement Manager Andy Williams and Chief Building Official David Casian.
The supervisors passed the first reading of the new hazardous vegetation ordinance on March 19 and approved the second and final reading of it on March 26. It went into effect on April 25.
The ordinance, No. 3082, is located in Lake County Code Chapter 13, Article VIII, Section 13-57 to 13-67. It can be found here.
Williams said inspections began immediately, with four inspectors – three Code Enforcement officers and one building official – going into the field in early May.
He said they started in the Clearlake Riviera, and moved through the Rivieras to Soda Bay, Middletown, Anderson Springs and Cobb, making a total of 2,000 site visits.
As they made their way through those communities, Williams said they found that most owners of improved properties were out doing hazardous abatement work during their inspections, and were either in compliance or met the requirements later on.
He said a large number of people did not understand the new ordinance or how to become compliant but did after education by inspectors, which led to compliance being accomplished in most cases.
Cal Fire does property inspections on improved properties on a three-year rotation, while homeowners associations do their own inspections on unimproved and improved properties inspections, Williams said.
This year, county staff and Cal Fire will do a beta test with computer-based inspection software for improved properties. It’s hoped that they will avoid the overlap that they encountered last year, when county staff completed inspections in some areas only to have Cal Fire come into the same areas after them.
“We’re working on that issue. I’m hoping this year there won’t be so much overlap, if any,” Williams said.
When a property is found to be noncompliant, a courtesy letter with a link to the county’s hazardous vegetation ordinance is sent out and the owner is given a 30-day window to become compliant, Williams explained.
If the work isn’t done voluntarily, the property owner gets an abatement notice with another 30 days to become compliant. If that next deadline isn’t met, Williams said possible abatement action is taken based on several factors including topography, fuel load, and life and safety concerns.
In 2019, temperatures increased early in the fire season, humidities dropped and winds picked up, which Williams said made abatement very unsafe. “So we did not abate any properties this year through our program.”
Williams said the county sent out 378 notices of abatement, with 47 returned undeliverable. He said the inspectors use the tax roll to get mailing information.
Of those notices that did make it to the owners, Williams said they had 75 percent compliance with the ordinance.
“Unimproved properties are the real challenges,” due to absentee owners, deceased owners, large properties and owners not understanding ordinances, he said.
For this year, Williams suggested prioritizing areas starting with improved properties and unimproved properties within 30 feet of any structure or egress/evacuation routes.
He proposed starting with Cobb Mountain, Anderson Springs, the Clearlake Riviera, Riviera West, Buckingham, Riviera Heights, and the urban interface around Lakeport and the Northshore.
This year, Williams has one full-time experienced Code Enforcement officer assigned to hazardous vegetation as well as extra help, with inspections set to begin this month.
Due to the large area they need to cover and the short amount of time before fire season starts – along with their other work – Williams asked for the board’s direction on how to move forward.
During the update, Williams told the board that his department needs more funding in order to enforce the ordinance. “It’s a daunting, daunting prospect, but we are moving forward,” he said, adding they are “spread very, very thin.”
Williams said he currently has three Code Enforcement officers and is interviewing a fourth. When asked by Supervisor Tina Scott how many he would need in a perfect world, he responded, “At least 10.”
Supervisor Bruno Sabatier said he wanted to shorten the 60-day abatement process and assess stiff fines. He suggested that those properties for which the abatement letters were returned may be in tax default, and could be prioritized and put up for tax sale more quickly.
Like Supervisor Rob Brown, Sabatier said he wanted Code Enforcement staff to focus on vegetation management until the fire season starts, at which point they can switch their attention to cannabis compliance.
Brown said the last several years of wildland fires have left a burn scar and fire line that circles almost the entire county. He said there is a little bit of time before the vegetation comes back in the fire scar.
He said he’s concerned about the areas that haven’t burned and don’t have a fire line, including the Rivieras and Buckingham, where 20 percent of the county’s residents live. Benefit zones approved by several of those communities last year have raised funding to do abatements if necessary, it was reported during the meeting.
For the abatements in the other parts of the county, Williams said they have less than $50,000 left. Community Development Director Michalyn DelValle said they will be asking for more money for abatement at the midyear budget review.
During public comment, Ken Kelsen, the fire safety coordinator for the Clear Lake Riviera Community Association, said the association is doing its own inspections on improved and unimproved properties. He said they are working with both Code Enforcement and Cal Fire and will be participating in a training class with those agencies on the property inspection software.
Kelsen said the association’s efforts are yielding results: Two years ago when he started they had 500 parcels rated as high for fire concerns, this year they have less than 100.
“We are making great strides,” Kelsen said.
Greg Scott, a retired fire official, said they needed to target their audience for their education efforts, suggesting sending the message out in schools and youth organizations in order for it to reach parents.
Last year, the largest fire in Lake County was 58 acres, Scott pointed out, noting that the county had 31 inches of rain during the rainy season so heavy fuels didn’t have a chance to dry out like normal.
He also suggested getting state legislators to start increasing fines on the state level so Cal Fire can work more efficiently along with the county.
During the discussion it was noted by community member Lance Williams that the ordinance still didn’t seem very clear in its requirements.
County Counsel Anita Grant said there was extensive public input on the ordinance, which, she noted, “is going to have to evolve as circumstances evolve.”
She said there also have been changes to fire safe rules at the state level. “Actions on the ground are the great equalizer for what makes sense.”
The board reached a consensus to support more education and consider shortening the abatement time frame, and prioritizing areas such as the Rivieras.
Brown said he wanted to make sure the work got done. “I don’t want to be having this discussion at some point that the Rivieras and Buckingham burned to the ground because we dropped the ball. I’m just going to leave it at that. That is my priority.”
The board also received a brief update from Williams on enforcement of vegetation abatement in the benefit zones for the Clearlake Riviera, Buckingham, Riviera West and Riviera Heights.
Williams said he had a list of 52 properties across the four benefit zones and personally inspected them all. Thirty-day abatement letters have been sent to all of them and, in the interim, he will contact contractors to get bids for abatement in case compliance isn’t voluntary.
He said he hoped by the end of March or the first week of April that this phase of the abatement work will be done. After that, if there isn’t compliance, they will need to prepare to write up affidavits and take them to a judge in order to proceed with abatements.
It was reported during the meeting that the county has so far collected more than $200,000 from property owners in the benefit zones. Those funds will be used to fund abatements, with the money to be recouped with liens.
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Charles Kluge, 92, was the victim of the wreck, according to Misty Wood, spokesperson for the Sonoma County Sheriff’s Office.
Kluge was driving alone in his 2006 Acura on private property in the area of Adobe Creek and Bell Hill roads near Kelseyville just after 11:30 a.m. Thursday when the crash occurred, according to the California Highway Patrol’s Clear Lake Area office.
The CHP said Kluge’s vehicle traveled through two wire fences, crossing Adobe Creek Road before it hit an upward sloping embankment.
Kluge, who was not wearing a seat belt, was taken by REACH air ambulance to Santa Rosa Memorial Hospital, where the CHP said he died of his injuries.
The CHP, which said alcohol was not suspected to be a factor in the crash, is continuing the investigation into the wreck, according to Officer Joel Skeen.
Skeen said that they are awaiting autopsy results to see if medical issues contributed to the crash, “but everything else is pretty clear.”
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On Monday, Sen. Mike McGuire and several members of the Legislature – including Assemblywoman Cecilia Aguiar-Curry, who also represents Lake County – introduced SB 944, the Fire Safe Home Tax Credit.
The size and scope of wildfires across California have increased in intensity and destruction over the past decade, impacting millions of residents and causing tens of billions in damage.
Lake County has been hit hard by a series of fires in that time, including the Rocky, Jerusalem and Valley in 2015, the Clayton in 2016, the Sulphur in 2017, and the Pawnee fire and Mendocino Complex in 2018.
The 2018 wildfire season eclipsed 2017 as the most destructive and deadliest year for wildfires in Golden State history. California’s largest, most destructive and deadly wildland fires have all taken place in the last decade – with over 38,000 homes, businesses and structures having been destroyed by California wildfires since 2015.
Because of this reality, the state of California has invested more than $1 billion in vegetation management and fire prevention funding over the next several years to help protect communities, but individual property owners in the wildland-urban interface have been on their own to pay for expensive hardening upgrades that will help make their home more fire safe.
Over 4.5 million homes are in the most threatened regions in the state and McGuire said there is a desperate need to provide everyday middle-class Californians with the tools they need to keep their home safe and help stabilize insurance markets in some of the most wildfire-prone regions in the state.
“Millions of Californians call the wildland-urban interface home and they are under increased threat by the growing size and scope of wildfires. This commonsense bill will help expedite desperately needed fire safe retrofits, which can be incredibly costly, on thousands of homes in the most threatened regions of our state,” Sen. McGuire said.
“This fire safe tax credit program is part of a larger data-driven plan to strategically invest in the most threatened communities to help neighbors retrofit their homes and usher in a more stabilized insurance market. We must act with urgency and provide middle-class Californians with the tools they need to keep their homes and families safe,” he said.
Under SB 944, homeowners making less than $70,000 annually ($140,000 for a couple) would qualify for the tax credit for home hardening projects with the primary purpose of protection from wildfire.
Qualified taxpayers can get a one-time tax credit, for up to $10,000, for completing home hardening projects already embedded in the state’s fire code, which could include: replacing roofs, exterior walls, vents, decks, fences and chimneys.
Out-of-pocket expenses for vegetation management will also be eligible for the tax credit and include wildfire mitigation measures like the creation of defensible space and establishing fuel breaks.
McGuire said funding mitigation makes fiscal sense: the Federal Emergency Management Agency estimates that for every $1 spent on fire hardening measures to bring buildings up to current codes, $4 are saved – including countless lives, billions of dollars in property damage, and hundreds of millions of avoided insurance costs.
In California, the return on investment can approach $6 for each dollar of mitigation.
The Fire Safe Home Tax Credit is co-authored by Senators Stern, Rubio, Dahle, Dodd, Galgiani, Hill, Jackson and Nielsen and Assemblymembers Aguiar-Curry, Friedman, Wood and Gallagher.
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Dr. Gary Pace, Lake County’s Public Health officer, said there is definitely flu in Lake County this season.
“So far, it hasn’t appeared to be particularly severe. No deaths from flu that we are aware of at this point,” he said this week.
Pace did not have any specific flu numbers for Lake County, and the California Department of Public Health said individual flu cases are not reportable in California.
The California Influenza Surveillance Program’s latest report on flu was released on Friday. It covers the period of Jan. 26 to Feb. 1, and tracks activity for the season beginning on Sept. 29.
That report shows that there have been above-expected levels for flu hospitalizations and outpatient cases, with 87 outbreaks and 266 deaths since the end of September.
The number of deaths has risen 55 from the previous report, for the period ended Jan. 25.
Of the total number of deaths in California since September, nine are pediatric cases, state health officials reported. The Centers for Disease Control said the nationwide number of influenza-associated pediatric deaths for the season so far is 78.
On a national level, the CDC said that 47 jurisdictions – including 45 states, along with Puerto Rico and New York City – have reported high incidences of influenza-like illness, or ILI, as of Feb. 1, with visits to health care providers as a result of ILI rising to 6.7 percent from 6 percent the previous week.
The CDC estimates that so far this flu season there have been at least 22 million flu illnesses nationwide, with 210,000 hospitalizations and 12,000 deaths from flu.
The California Influenza Surveillance Program report says that flu activity remains elevated in California, with the predominant viruses being the Flu A (H1)pdm09 viruses, although Flu B (Victoria) viruses are still circulating.
The CDC said influenza A and B viruses cause seasonal flu epidemics almost every winter in the United States.
Influenza A viruses are the only influenza viruses known to cause flu pandemics, or global epidemics, of the illness, the CDC reported.
The pdm09 version of the virus is the same as the flu virus that emerged in the spring of 2009 and caused a flu pandemic, and since then has continued to circulate seasonally with relatively small genetic changes and changes to their antigenic properties occurring since then, the CDC said.
Hospitalizations related to ILI nationwide are 35.5 per 100,000, an overall rate which the CDC said is similar to this time of year in recent flu seasons.
The percentage of deaths attributed to pneumonia and influenza is 7.1 percent, a rate which the CDC termed as low.
The California Influenza Surveillance Program reported that, to date, more flu deaths in California have occurred among persons who are age 65 or older, 61.3 percent, than
among persons aged 65 or younger, 38.7 percent, during the 2019–2020 influenza season.
The report said that the percentage of deaths occurring among persons younger than age 65 is consistent with other seasons during which influenza viruses other than influenza A (H3N2) have circulated in greater numbers, such as the 2015-2016 and 2018-2019 seasons.
While flu is widespread, state health officials report that it’s not too late to be vaccinated.
The CDC said flu vaccine effectiveness estimates will be available later this month, but that agency also said that vaccination is always the best way to prevent flu and its potentially serious complications.
Health officials said that everyone above age 6 months needs to have a flu shot.
Pregnant women, children under age 5, adults age 65 and above and people with chronic conditions are at high risk for flu-related complications.
To find out more about where you can be vaccinated, visit https://vaccinefinder.org/.
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