Hope & Band-Aids: Wildfire

,Nowhere is the city's reliance on hope and band-aids more apparent than in hazard planning. A prime example is its response to wildfire evacuation.

Wildfire Evacuation from Pismo Heights

For many years, there was only one way out of Pismo Heights: down Longview Avenue to Wadsworth Street. In 2022, a secondary evacuation route was formally documented in the Pismo Beach Community Wildfire Protection Plan (CWPP). This alternate route is a dirt road that winds through wildland to Price Canyon Road.

From the CWPP's modeling, a fire ignited at Pismo Preserve reaches Pismo Heights in 24 minutes. A fire started on Price Canyon Road takes only 10 minutes to arrive. That means the secondary evacuation route may not be available under likely fire scenarios, leaving Pismo Heights in the same one-way-out condition as before.

The San Luis Obispo County Community Fire Safe Council has modeled the evacuation time for zone PSM-007, which is primarily the Heights neighborhood, at 76 minutes.

If classes are in session at Judkins Middle School, or it's the 4th of July when many second-homeowners are in town and tourists have parked far up the hill to watch the city's fireworks show, many more people than the census population of the neighborhood will be attempting to flee at the same time. In fact, after this year's fireworks show, it took outbound traffic on Longview Avenue about 80 minutes to go from fully stopped to moving slowly — and this was almost solely tourist traffic.

The hope: that a fire will not break out on the 4th of July, when illegal fireworks and often windy and dry conditions make that more probable. The band-aid: a secondary evacuation route that exists on paper but becomes nonviable in a likely wildfire scenario.

The city's Safety Element, which addresses risks like wildfire, hasn't been fully revised since 1992. An update is in progress, and state law (Gov. Code § 65302.15, from AB 747 and SB 99) now requires the Safety Element to identify evacuation routes and evaluate their capacity, safety, and viability under real emergency scenarios.

The city must ensure evacuation planning addresses the vulnerability of the secondary route and considers the full population actually in harm's way. If tourist event parking in the residential neighborhood endangers the people who live in the Very High Fire Hazard Severity Zone at the wildland-urban interface in Pismo Heights, the city needs to find another place for them to park* and consider extending the resident parking permit program into residential areas near downtown.

That's what it means to operate with eyes wide open and a plan instead of hope and band-aids.

*The city has floated remote/satellite parking and a downtown shuttle for over a decade without acting. The 2014 Downtown Strategic Plan first suggested "a shuttle program could be used to transport people to and from the Downtown and satellite parking areas." The pending 2026 GP/LCP update still only directs the city to "consider implementing" one. The 2023 Parking Management Plan recommends the same thing again, while noting the Parking Advisory Committee's own finding that shuttles have failed in the past. A parking structure has fared no better, rejected on cost grounds in 2016 and again in 2023.