Los Angeles wildfires spark concerns for high-risk areas in Orange County
The recent fires in Los Angeles have sparked concerns for residents living in Orange County's high-risk areas, which have seen explosive development in the past few decades.
"They're going up and all we can do is just make sure these homes are built in a way that they're going to withstand these hazards," Orange County Fire Authority Captain Thanh Nguyen said. "As we saw on the news with these fires in LA, if Mother Nature kicks in with strong winds, we need to be prepared for that."
Between 1990 and 2020, developers built tens of thousands of homes in fire-prone areas, known as Orange County's wildland urban interface, since the communities were built close to open space and wildlife.
In the past decades, development in Tustin Ranch turned a nine-home neighborhood into a community with more than 3,100 houses in 2020. A similar trend appears in Irvine's Orchard Hills, which now has 400 hundred homes.
It's also evident closer to the coast where Newport Beach's Crystal Cove community has blossomed into 4,500 homes in 2020 compared to several dozen in 1990.
One of the largest growth spurts happened in Ladera Ranch, which has developed from 222 to more than 12,000 homes.
"Didn't really consider fires at the time, but now I do," homeowner Tina Ruiz said.
Ruiz lives close to several wilderness areas in Ladera Ranch.
"I'm definitely concerned every time there's Santa Ana," she said. "I definitely think about the canyons behind us and the potential embers that can blow over on this end."
New developments are built with clear firebreaks but building in the wildland urban interface comes with risk.
Nearly 100,000 homes in Orange County are in areas with a strong likelihood of wildfires sparking in the next 30 years, according to data from the climate risk assessment nonprofit First Street Foundation.