photo credit: City of Santa Rosa
Local Responsibility Fire Hazard Severity Zones

The city of Santa Rosa is preparing to expand areas considered most at risk from wildfire. The update follows new state hazard maps and will bring thousands of additional homes under local defensible‑space rules.

Santa Rosa’s fire department says the city’s current map outlining the wildland‑urban interface, or WUI, is outdated.

It was first drawn in 2009, before the Tubbs, Nuns, Glass and Kincade fires reshaped the landscape.

Last year, CAL FIRE released new fire‑hazard maps that show more neighborhoods inside city limits falling into high and very high risk zones.

Santa Rosa officials say the proposed map update would add 3,082 parcels to the city’s wildland‑urban interface fire area boundary and remove 811 that no longer qualify.

If approved by the City Council, homeowners in the newly added areas will have to maintain defensible space and follow Santa Rosa’s vegetation‑management rules, including keeping dry grass trimmed to four inches during high fire season.

“Any link in the chain that we can break is going to be effective,” said Scott Westrope, Santa Rosa’s interim fire chief.

Westrope said the goal is to slow fire spread long enough for crews to intervene.

Reducing fuel, he said, gives firefighters a chance to stop a fire or for the fire to stop itself.

The ordinance updating the WUI maps goes before Santa Rosa’s City Council for a first reading on Tuesday, April 21.