Altadena Census Tract Map (Background Photo – Gareth Peries)
Community Wildfire Protection Plans (CWPPs) provide guiding documents to assist people and organizations to better prepare for, mitigate against, respond to, and recover from future wildfire threats. Altadena has never had a CWPP. The new CWPP is being developed to be effective, manageable, and impactful for the various stakeholders in Altadena.
By Mala Arthur
The purpose of the Altadena CWPP is to support safety-oriented decision making by people at all levels of the community, during a disaster or potential disaster. When people have a shared plan that they have explored, thought through, asked questions about and even drilled on before a disaster, it provides an antidote to last-minute, stressed out decisions. Thoughtful choices save lives and property. The plan informs people about their various choices before and during a disaster. and how to prioritize the answers. The CWPP enables Altadenans to help themselves and each other as much as possible, allowing first responders to work on more urgent situations.
Tentative goals include:
- finding ways to easily sign up all Altadena residents, rebuilders, and workers to the official emergency alert systems including ALERT and NIXLE;
- creating and implementing neighborhood-based alert systems that do not depend on the power, internet, and cell service being functional (eg sirens or similar);
- planning for evacuations so they are safer and much more effective than those on Jan 7/8 2025;
- communicating clear building hardening activities at various price points and possibly providing funding to support them;
- communicating and planning for vegetation reduction and selection activities that can help slow the spread of fire and possibly funding some of them;
- workshops on how to prepare for evacuation, and if possible, drills;
- neighborhood databases of at-risk people including senior living facilities, nursing homes, individuals with mobility challenges, latch-key kids etc;
- large animal evacuation support;
- volunteer firefighter support;
- radio communications support;
- and neighborhood-based emergency response support.
Fundamental to any CWPP is the engagement and collective action of many community members to protect the things that are valuable, address the specific challenges of the local community, and to develop comprehensive risk management strategies that work for everyone.
Therefore, there will be public meetings to introduce and verify the proposed contents of the Altadena CWPP. The first will probably be held in Fall 2026, location and format to be announced. Check Colorado Boulevard for details, or contact altadenacwpp@proton.me for info.
> If you’d like to contribute to the CWPP, fill out this survey. It takes a few moments but will really help.
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