Announcement: Draft Update to the Fire Hazard Planning Technical Advisory Released for Public Review

As California grapples with the most extensive wildfires in the state’s history, OPR has released a draft update to the Fire Hazard Planning Technical Advisory (Fire Hazard Planning TA). The draft update has been prepared in response to Senate Bill 901 (Dodd, 2018) and Assembly Bill 2911 (Friedman, 2018), which called for OPR to update the Fire Hazard Planning TA to include specific land use strategies to reduce fire risk to buildings, infrastructure, and communities.

Overview of the Fire Hazard Planning TA Update

The draft technical advisory is meant to assist cities and counties as they revise their general plans. The update provides guidance on

  • outreach and engagement to promote more robust and collaborative wildfire solutions;
  • conducting comprehensive wildfire hazard and risk assessments;
  • aligning and integrating these assessments across a variety of plans; and
  • developing general plan policies and programs that reduce risk for existing and future communities.

Moreover, the TA includes sample policies and programs, case studies, potential funding sources, and numerous other resources and tools to support local level planning and implementation to reduce wildfire risk at the community scale.

Draft Fire Hazard Planning Technical Advisory Update

Public Review and Next Steps

Public comments on the draft are due to OPR by December 18, 2020.

OPR staff hosted a webinar on November 18, 2020 to present the draft Fire Hazard Planning TA and answer questions. You can download the slides and view this webinar on OPR's YouTube channel.

OPR staff are committed to reviewing and reflecting on all comments received and will work to the best of their ability to integrate public input into the final document. The final Fire Hazard Planning TA is expected to be released in early 2021. Once finalized, the updated Fire Hazard Planning TA will supersede the initial version published in 2015.