We wanted to extend our thanks to the mountaintop residents and interested stakeholders who joined us at the San Marcos Fire Station on February 22 to discuss the implementation of the latest phase of the Santa Barbara Mountain Communities Defense Zone. We are grateful you came and shared your thoughts — both supporters and sceptics alike — and to listen to our partners and collaborators from the Santa Barbara Firesafe Council and Santa Barbara County Fire Department. We sincerely appreciate the support of neighbors like you.
We’d like to take this opportunity to highlight some points from the meeting for those who weren’t able to attend or watch the meeting online.
There has been some misinformation about the effectiveness of fuel breaks and their associated ecological impacts. This distracts from the underlying purpose of fuel breaks, which was heard several times at the meeting: without them there is a high likelihood that our first responders would not have all the tools needed to safely engage directly with the fire front before the flames reach residential areas.