La Habra Heights officials and residents weigh AI fuels‑mapping pilot to target brush clearance

Fire Marshal Ryan Jorgensson urged the La Habra Heights community to consider a small pilot of new AI‑driven fuels mapping to help the city focus limited brush‑clearance dollars and improve wildfire preparedness. “I am the fire marshal, essentially the chief of community risk reduction here with the La Habra Heights Fire Department,” Jorgensson said, framing the proposal as a response to an overwhelmed inspection program.

Representatives from Firecore AI described how higher‑resolution satellite imagery combined with machine learning can produce meter‑scale maps of vegetation and fuels around houses and roadways. “We actually take those 10‑meter pixels and we divide them up into 100 one‑meter pixels,” Alex, a company representative, said, explaining the technical step that gives communities more detailed fuel information than larger federal datasets.

Why it matters: presenters and the fire marshal said the new maps could change how the city chooses which properties to inspect and where to spend abatement money. Dr. Flaxman, a presenter with Firecore AI and academic experience in fire science, said local officials can only control fuels, not terrain or weather, and that better fuel data makes fire‑spread simulations and prioritization more reliable. “The only thing that's under local control is the fuels,” Dr. Flaxman said.

What the pilot would do: Firecore AI proposed an initial pilot that would produce updated fuels maps, support inspection triage by census block groups and be validated on the ground by inspectors and limited drone flights over public lands for calibration. The team said they would run simulations combining fuels, terrain and weather after validation to show how specific mitigation—such as fuel breaks—could alter potential fire behavior.

Privacy, drones and insurance: presenters emphasized privacy protections, saying their classification shows vegetation, buildings and roads but not people or license plates and that drone flights would be limited to calibration and public lands under FAA rules. The company also told the meeting that state insurance rules are changing next January and that, while current law constrains how insurers can use risk maps, future policy could require or enable discounts for proactive property mitigation.

Cost and access: the company offered a pilot price of $300 a month for La Habra Heights as a community trial year. Officials discussed whether maps funded by the city would be made public and said that would be a council decision; they also noted concerns about public shaming of noncompliant properties and the need to balance transparency with fairness.

Questions and next steps: residents pressed the presenters for demonstrations—requested were simulations showing a January‑6 style wind event and comparisons of outcomes with and without fuel breaks. Presenters said such simulations require additional computation and data validation but committed to delivering them after ground verification. A speaker said the item will be placed on the council’s October agenda for further consideration.

The city did not take formal action at the workshop; officials and company representatives said they would pursue validation work, run simulations, and return with results and a proposal for the council to consider at the next formal meeting.