Chino Hills reviews draft safety element after evacuation analysis flags single‑access neighborhoods and longer evacuation times

Chino Hills City officials and consultants spent the bulk of an Aug. 13 special workshop reviewing a draft update to the city’s General Plan safety element, focusing on new climate vulnerability analysis and an evacuation study that identified single‑access neighborhoods and projected longer evacuation travel times as the region builds out.

Rima Shukra, a principal with Rincon Consultants, told the council the safety element is intended “to identify strategies to reduce impacts that could occur from natural and human made hazards,” and described new maps of seismic risk, liquefaction, flooding, oil fields and Cal Fire’s very high fire hazard severity zones. The draft includes two technical appendices: a climate‑change vulnerability assessment and an evacuation analysis prepared to comply with recent state statutes, Shukra said.

The evacuation analysis, presented by Mike Aronson of Kittelson and Associates, used a regional transportation model and “aim[ed] more towards a worst case set of situations,” he said, including an evacuation layered onto PM‑peak commuting. The study modeled three scenarios — a wildfire igniting in Carbon Canyon, a wildfire starting west of Carbon Canyon and spreading toward Chino Hills, and an earthquake along the Chino Fault — and identified recurring bottlenecks on Carbon Canyon Road, Grand Avenue, Butterfield Ranch Road and Chino Hills Parkway.

Aronson said the modeling focused on existing roadways without assuming major future road improvements and showed that, under full build‑out and without additional traffic control, evacuations from Carbon Canyon could take roughly 13 to 31 minutes longer in 2040 than today. He described the projections as an informational tool to prioritize measures such as reversing lanes, adjusting signal timing and installing temporary traffic control points.

Several council members and residents pressed the consultant team to re‑check neighborhoods they said were missing from the list of single‑access areas. “Fairfield Ranch … there literally is one way in and one way out for 1,000 homes,” one speaker said, and asked why that neighborhood was not flagged. Aronson responded that the analysis “included every neighborhood” but that certain areas are “flagged” where additional attention is needed; Shukra said staff would take another look and modify the maps as appropriate.

Council and staff also discussed communications and situational awareness tools. City Manager Ben Montgomery and public‑safety officials described existing links to Cal Fire cameras and the city’s virtual emergency operations center, and raised the possibility of dedicated real‑time traffic cameras or vehicle‑counting loops for targeted intersections. The sheriff’s and fire representatives described cooperative regional training and a QR‑code tool to orient outside deputies and strike teams to local maps and evacuation areas.

The draft safety element includes policies on evacuation capacity, communication and outreach, evacuation assistance for vulnerable populations and procedures for single‑access neighborhoods. Council members urged actionable items, not just check‑the‑box policies: neighborhood evacuation training, better pre‑planning for school‑day evacuations and clearer provisions for transportation assistance for people with special needs were among the items requested.

Nick Ligore, the city’s community development lead on the update, told council that staff will revise the draft to reflect the comments received. “The next step after this meeting is to revise the safety element based on your input and then submit it to Cal Fire and take it to the State Board of Forestry and Fire for their recommendation,” Ligore said; staff said they expect to publish the draft EIR and start a likely 45‑day public review period in October or November before returning to the Planning Commission and council for final action.

What happens next: staff will revise the maps and policy language, investigate neighborhoods flagged by council and the public, and forward the revised draft to Cal Fire and the State Board of Forestry for the required review. The draft EIR and the broader general plan update will enter public review later this year.

Key documents: the draft safety element packet, the climate vulnerability appendix and the evacuation analysis will be posted when the city releases the public review materials this fall.