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Assistant fire chief outlines fuel‑break maps, ambassador wildfire assessments and hazmat consolidation
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Summary
Assistant Fire Chief Chris Bachman told the council the district will publish fuel‑break mapping to Landfire on June 1, expand HAZMAT program integration with county health under Contra Costa County Fire, and pilot an ambassador program using XyloPlan and Fireside to assess 1,000–1,500 homes across two communities.
Assistant Fire Chief Chris Bachman updated the Lafayette City Council on fire‑district accomplishments for 2025 and plans for 2026, with a focus on wildfire preparedness and community risk reduction.
Bachman said total district incidents in 2025 numbered about 131,286 and that roughly 81 percent were EMS calls while fires accounted for about 3.5 percent of incidents. He described operational upgrades (new traffic safety units, Station 94 groundbreaking in Brentwood) and said the HAZMAT program will be folded into a community risk reduction division in coordination with county health for inspection and response work.
On wildfire mitigation, Bachman said staff have been mapping fuel breaks for years and will make the dataset public by uploading it to LANDFIRE on June 1, including acreages, treatment types and funding sources. "We're planning on making that public facing on June 1," he said, noting the dataset should be useful to insurers and emergency planners.
Bachman described a pilot ambassador program approved by the fire board to train residents to perform home‑level “wildfire prepared” assessments. The program will use fire‑pathway modeling by XyloPlan and the Fireside assessment platform to score homes to a wildfire‑prepared standard; the pilot will cap assessments at 2,500 homes across two communities, with a target of 1,000–1,500 completed assessments to generate a community‑level score for insurers to review.
Councilmembers asked about sharing individual homeowner scores with insurers; Bachman said individual scores would not be shared but that the city would share community‑level scores and the LANDFIRE dataset to better inform insurance underwriting. He also described how the district will use traffic‑safety apparatus and community warning system push notifications in an emergency.
Council thanked the chief for the briefing and asked staff to continue coordination with the Emergency Preparedness Commission and county partners.
