Wildfire Services

The Grand County Community Wildfire Protection Plan (CWPP) is the guiding document for fire and emergency managers, as well as agencies who manage land within Grand County. It includes a comprehensive risk assessment developed through desktop analysis and on-the-ground assessments. The County promotes public engagement in wildfire mitigation through the project hub site, story map, and project tracking tool.

This 2024 update to the Montrose County CWPP was a collaborative effort to develop strategies that will help reduce the risks associated with wildfire both pre- and post-fire, within the WUI community and broader county landscape. The CWPP includes wildfire hazard assessment and watershed assessments that consider potential severe wildfire behavior, as well as post-fire debris flow, sedimentation, and flooding.

The Kern County Community Wildfire Protection Plan (CWPP) addresses hazards and risks of wildland fire throughout the county and makes recommendations for fuel reduction projects, public outreach and education, structural ignitability reduction, and fire response capabilities. Some of the highest-risk areas identified are communities located within and adjacent to National Forest land and the wildland-urban interface, as confirmed by the 2021 fires, particularly the French Fire.

The Three Rivers community is situated in the Sierra Nevada foothills, where several fire-adapted ecological communities occur, and where many of the large wildfires in California have been occurring in recent years. The shifting climate, particularly rising temperatures, combined with changing wind patterns, and increasing temporal and spatial variability of water availability, are considerably escalating wildfire risk across California.

In July 2021, SWCA released a story map to engage the public in the ongoing CWPP process for the City of Corona. The CWPP identifies priority areas where mitigation measures are needed to protect the city from irreplaceable life, property, and critical infrastructure losses because of wildfire.

The 2022 Kenai Peninsula Borough (KPB) Community Wildfire Protection Plan (CWPP) update provides a peninsula-wide scale of wildfire risk and protection needs, brings together all responsible wildfire management and suppression entities in the planning area to address identified needs, and provides a framework for future planning and implementation of necessary mitigation measures as KPB’s first peninsula-wide CWPP.

SWCA worked with Santa Fe County Fire Department to develop a Community Wildfire Protection Plan. The SWCA Team developed an interactive Story Map to increase engagement with the Santa Fe County public during the Covid-19 Pandemic.

SWCA developed the Pope County CWPP, a county-level plan that evaluates wildfire threat to communities and infrastructure, and identifies measures that homeowners, land managers, and fire departments can take to reduce the impact of wildfire to life, property, and other community values at risk.

SWCA developed the original 2016 Santa Clara CWPP and was contracted to provide the 2023 update, which included development of a hub site, story map, project tracker, and data portal. The CWPP is a countywide strategic plan with goals for creating fire adapted communities throughout the Silicon Valley planning area.

SWCA developed an island-wide CWPP to address wildfire hazards to valued resources and assets across Martha’s Vineyard. The plan involved broad stakeholder participation, a comprehensive desktop analysis, and compilation of recommended actions to mitigate wildfire risk.

SWCA worked with multiple jurisdictions and stakeholders to develop a Damage Assessment and Burned Area Rehabilitation Plan for the Ute Park Fire in northern New Mexico.

SWCA developed the first CWPP in 2012, was retained to update the plan in 2018, and contracted again in 2022 to develop a project story map and hub site. The CWPP addresses the hazards and risks of wildland fire throughout Valencia County and makes recommendations for fuel reduction projects, public outreach and education, structural ignitability reduction, and fire response capabilities.