Wildfire Hazard Technology Guides Placer County's $1.6B Wildfire Resilience Challenge

AUBURN CA, OCTOBER 31, 2024 — Placer County, home to California's largest number of habitable structures in wildfire-prone areas, has partnered with Vibrant Planet to implement an innovative, data-driven approach to managing its wildfire hazard. The initiative is part of the county's newly launched Regional Forest Health program, designed to protect lives, property, and natural resources from wildfire. The partnership was recently highlighted in a spotlight video, available here. 

56% of Placer County is forested, and 75% of its communities are within or adjacent to forest lands. To protect this high proportion of homes, transportation coordinators, critical infrastructure, and watersheds, the Placer County team needed a technology partner to help them build, implement and scale wildfire hazard reduction plans. The county selected Vibrant Planet to achieve these goals, citing the platform’s high-quality risk analysis framework and additional tools to streamline collaboration and scenario planning. 

“With over 650,000 acres of forest to manage, the scale of wildfire risk in Placer County is massive, but Vibrant Planet's decision support tool has been transformative,” explains Kerri Timmer, Regional Forest Health Coordinator at the County of Placer. “We use the platform to analyze our entire forested landscape and precisely target where we'll get the greatest risk reduction benefits. What could have been an overwhelming challenge has become a clear, data-driven roadmap that our partners and community have rallied behind." 

While the cost to treat all 650,000 acres would have surpassed $1.6 billion, Vibrant Planet helped partners across Placer County and private and public land ownership build a more strategic and cost-effective action plan. Based on their initial inputs, the platform determined 31 treatments across 20,000 acres between the Sierra Nevada foothills and North Lake Tahoe that could serve as a focus area to address the highest wildfire hazard and protect the community’s most at-risk critical assets. This series of treatments will thwart a high percentage of the county’s risk while costing only an estimated $49.6 million. 

“The threat of mega-fires to communities and ecosystems is growing, and it can feel impossible to know where to start,” comments Vibrant Planet CEO Allison Wolff. “We’re thrilled to see Placer County’s team and partners use the platform to build a management plan that strategically tackles hazards, makes the best use of their funds, and protects what matters most.” 

Through a phased approach, Placer County’s team plans to roll out the platform to engage more partners to design complementary initiatives using Vibrant Planet. The program will then expand regionally, partnering with neighboring counties to advocate for state and federal support of cross-jurisdictional wildfire mitigation efforts.