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In 2020, California had over 9,900 wildfires, which burned a record 4.25 million acres and killed 33 people, according to the state’s Department of Forestry and Fire Protection (CalFire). It is time for California to rethink its approach to wildfires, stakeholders said.
Both wildfires and utility-owned power lines run throughout California’s federally-, state- and privately-held forest lands. Regulated utilities have caused less than 10% of California s wildfires, according to the California Public Utilities Commission (CPUC), but a California constitutional provision makes utilities financially liable if their equipment is involved in, without causing, a fire’s ignition.
As a result, the state’s three dominant investor-owned utilities (IOUs) and their customers have incurred costs for fires involving their equipment on lands where public agencies efforts to avoid fires has been inadeq
When leadership at the UNC Gillings School of Global Public Health made plans in 2019 to launch a learning program in disaster preparedness and relief, they didn’t anticipate rolling it out in the middle of a global pandemic. But when Gillings on the Ground, a new training course for the Carolina community, kicked off in October 2020, participants found that it couldn’t have been more timely.
Over the course of five weeks, participants connected over Zoom with organizations in North Carolina to get a real-world look at what it takes to prepare for and respond to needs brought on by disasters and other public health emergencies.
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