SESSION
Community Brigade Program: A Groundbreaking Public and Private Sector Collaboration
The 2018 Woolsey Fire in Southern California acted as a catalyst for change, motivating the development of a new approach to help bridge the gap between professional first response agencies and local communities in preparing for and responding to major disasters in the Wildland Urban Interface. The challenge was creating a lasting cultural change through empowered relationships that included shared risk and responsibility. This session will cover what it took to build a pilot program that was innovative, collaborative, sustainable, measurable, transparent, and repeatable. This 5-year effort yielded a pilot program crossing seven high-risk communities with the full support of the Los Angeles County Fire Department, the Los Angeles County Board of Supervisors, and local community groups. You will learn how proactive preparedness and integrated response efforts resulted in safer, more resilient communities. The presentation discusses the challenges faced and lessons learned in response to the December 2024 Franklin and January 2025 Palisades fires.
Learning Objectives
- Upon completion, participants will learn how encouraging resilient community leaders to be force multipliers during significant events will help alleviate the strain on first responders and allow communities to take ownership of the results (both positive and negative)
- Upon completion, participants will be able to understand how individuals living in the WUI can be empowered with information and tools to inspire accountability and asting cultural change.
- Upon completion, participants will learn how to engage existing first-responder agencies in collaborative partnerships to shape the nature of disaster preparedness and response. Without better community engagement and acknowledged acceptance of risk and responsibility, agencies will continue to fight impossible battles and have unfair expectations during extreme events. Participants will learn the benefits of a shared risk, shared responsibility approach.