Briefing Highlights | June 23, 2026
A Shared Challenge and a Regional Response: Preparing Santa Clara County for Wildfire
By Heidi Rodeback
Wildfire risk remains a persistent concern across Silicon Valley. After regional wildfire activity peaked in 2020, concern has remained elevated: 67% of respondents to the 2025 Silicon Valley Poll rated increasing wildfires and extreme weather as a very or extremely serious problem.
On June 12, 2026, Joint Venture’s board of directors received a briefing on the Valley’s wildfire risk by Seth Schalet of the Santa Clara County FireSafe Council, with Marc Landgraf and Derek Neumann of the Santa Clara Valley Open Space Authority highlighting regional efforts.
This article draws from that presentation.
California is facing a new reality: wildfires are no longer isolated events but an increasingly common part of life, with consequences extending far beyond the flames. Wildfire smoke poses a serious public health threat, contributing to more than 50,000 deaths in California since 2008 and triggering some of the state’s worst air quality conditions in more than two decades. Wildfires are also increasing utility and insurance costs, adding to greenhouse gas emissions, and putting new pressure on the resilience of California’s ecosystems.
The state’s geography makes it especially vulnerable. As hotter, drier conditions combine with California's natural wind patterns, wildfires are becoming less frequent but more intense, burning larger areas more quickly and at higher temperatures.
What is Santa Clara County’s exposure to wildfire risk?
Santa Clara County shares many conditions associated with the destructive wildfires seen elsewhere in the state, including abundant fuels, fire-prone weather, challenging topography, and development patterns that place communities near flammable vegetation. Risk is especially concentrated in the county’s wildland-urban interface, where human development meets or intermingles with wildland vegetation. Risks in these areas do not respect property lines; fires can move quickly across landscapes, jurisdictions, and ownership boundaries.
Hazard maps developed by CAL FIRE and the California State Fire Marshal reflect this reality, showing lower risk in the county’s urban core and higher risk along its perimeter. Santa Clara’s Community Wildfire Protection Plan identifies the county’s highest-risk communities as Los Gatos, Monte Sereno, Los Altos Hills, Saratoga, Cupertino, and the western unincorporated county. Across these areas, nearly 74% of land is privately owned, and 90–95% of homes sit adjacent to parks or wildland areas, increasing their exposure.
Structures in these zones are vulnerable to ignition from embers, direct flames, and radiant heat. The combination of natural fuels and combustible building materials can intensify fire behavior, making it critical to maintain defensible buffers between homes and vegetation.
How prepared is the region to respond?
Santa Clara County enters wildfire season with substantial response capacity. Ten fire and emergency response agencies serve more than 1.9 million residents across the county’s 15 cities and unincorporated areas. The region also benefits from countywide ambulance services, advanced life support capabilities, and CAL FIRE support in state responsibility areas, including fire engines, hand crews, bulldozers, and a helicopter during peak fire season.
Local and regional teams are supported by California’s mutual aid system, which enables jurisdictions to rapidly share personnel, equipment, and expertise, and to prepare for major incidents by sharing training and integrated communication systems.
But even the strongest response systems face limits. During severe fire seasons, agencies may be called to multiple incidents at the same time, stretching personnel and equipment. Rare, “black swan” events — such as the 2025 Los Angeles fires — can place extraordinary demands on resources. Agencies must also grapple with uneven levels of preparedness among businesses and residents, many of whom are not ready for a fast-moving wildfire emergency.
Regional coordination is key
Because wildfires do not respect city limits, regional coordination is essential for both prevention and response.
Many of the most effective mitigation strategies must be implemented across large landscapes. Managing grasslands — where fires spread most rapidly — can slow fire progression and give agencies more time to respond. Prescribed burns, when properly managed, can reduce fire intensity and make future fires easier to control. Evacuation routes are critical to ensuring communities can evacuate quickly and safely; maintaining these routes requires coordination among multiple jurisdictions.
On red flag days, personnel monitor conditions for emerging fires and relay reports immediately to responding agencies. As extreme fire events become more common, early detection, information sharing, and proactive planning become increasingly important.
The collaborative approach also improves resilience. Across the Santa Cruz and Diablo ranges, forest health work has been shared among tribal organizations, conservation groups, open-space districts, parks agencies, water districts, universities, public land managers, and private landowners. By working across boundaries to monitor, restore, and protect woodland ecosystems, they are strengthening the region’s resilience not only to catastrophic fires, but also to diseases and invasive pests.
What are the next steps — and are they sufficiently funded?
The funding landscape is shifting, and the future remains uncertain.
Proposition 4 bond funding is scheduled to fall from $598 million in FY26 to $314 million in FY27, while Greenhouse Gas Reduction Fund allocations — subject to annual fluctuations in cap-and-trade revenues — are expected to decrease from $200 million to $142 million.
Measure D, approved by voters in June 2026, will provide the Santa Clara Valley Open Space Authority with an additional $17 million annually for open space access, habitat restoration, and wildfire risk reduction.
But this addresses only part of the need. Federal funding cuts and budget deficits are putting pressure on California’s wildfire programs, shifting more of the burden to local and regional partners.
In response, implementation of the California Wildfire and Landscape Resilience Action Plan and adoption of the 2026 Santa Clara County Community Wildfire Protection Plan this year by the Santa Clara County Board of Supervisors will be critical.
Regional partners are also exploring new financing and governance models, including a wildfire Joint Powers Authority and climate resilience districts.
These efforts reflect a growing recognition that wildfire is a shared regional challenge. Meeting the challenge will require communities, agencies, and land managers to pool resources, coordinate investments, and work across jurisdictional boundaries.
Heidi Rodeback, content manager for Joint Venture Silicon Valley, prepared this summary of a presentation made to Joint Venture’s board of directors on June 12, 2026.
