This 23,000-acre community, hailed by the developer as Orange County’s last frontier of development, has a giant problem — it sits in the middle of a high fire hazard zone.
Given recent disasters that have befallen Pacific Palisades, Altadena and other communities, fires are top of mind for any buyer or renter in California.
Developer Rancho Mission Viejo LLC has made prevention of fires the key element to planning of its namesake community, scheduled to have 14,000 homes and 5.2 million square feet of commercial space when completed in the coming 15 years.
“We’ve been worried about fires for a long time,” Rancho Mission Viejo President Jeremy Laster told the Business Journal.
“We’ve implemented lots of measures to harden our communities. We have drought tolerant but fire-resistant landscaping. We have designed our communities to not have the open eaves that allow the embers that cause fires. We’ve tasked our planning teams with coming up with designs that are the most fire retardant possible.”
The developer’s efforts have become so noteworthy that Milliman, a global actuarial and consulting firm that conducts research for about 70% of the nation’s insurance companies, is using Rancho Mission Viejo as an example for other residential communities to follow.
The study, published on Nov. 7, highlights how a series of severe wildfires in California since 2017 has led insurers to increase rates and reduce coverage capacity in high-risk areas. The study aims to more accurately reflect risk reduction efforts—such as firebreaks, vegetation management and community design—when determining insurance eligibility and pricing.
“Rancho Mission Viejo has many of the features that you’d like to see to prevent fires,” said Dave Winnacker, a former fire chief who helped co-found XyloPlan, which did the modeling for Milliman’s report on Rancho Mission Viejo.
“Rancho Mission Viejo has all the hard parts in place” like wide streets and buffer zones, he told the Business Journal. “They are in good shape.”
The California Board of Forestry is finalizing a regulation called “Zone Zero” that likely won’t allow vegetation or connecting wooden fences within five feet of structures. Mature trees are likely to be exempted. It will apply within one year to new construction in “Very High Fire Hazard Severity Zones” and within three years for existing structures.
Once it adopts the incoming state regulation, “Rancho Mission Viejo will be an A+ top shelf” for fire prevention, Winnacker said.
Fireproofing a Community
What follows are the key techniques implemented by Rancho Mission Viejo to prevent fires:
- Rather than the main roads going straight through the middle of the community, they are routed in a circular pattern, thus serving as a firebreak.
The roads are also designed to permit residents to escape quickly to the nearby toll road to the north, the Santa Ana (5) Freeway to the west and the Ortega Highway, which is being expanded, to the south.
The roads are also designed to give firefighters fast access to potential danger zones.
- Sport fields, parks and parking lots are strategically placed to provide more firebreaks.
“Orchards, believe it or not, are a good fire suppression methodology,’’ said Mike Balsamo, Rancho Mission Viejo’s senior vice president for government relations.
- Most electrical and telephone poles have been removed, and their wires have been placed underground.
- Each village is surrounded by “fuel modification zones” from 110 to 270 feet wide that are designed as a non-combustible buffer where a wildfire approaching a neighborhood will run out of fuel. The zones include low combustion landscaping that is either thinned or irrigated and kept to a height of 18 inches.
“It’s close to 25 miles of continuous fuel modification zones around all of our villages,” said Jay Bullock, the developer’s vice president of planning and entitlement.
“If a fire were to come into the natural vegetation area adjacent to the community, there’s thin vegetation, which lowers the volume of the fuel.”
- Highly flammable trees like pines, eucalyptus and palms have been banned for the most part, including in the yards of homeowners.
- As the communities are built, the elevation increases. Each new area is terraced to provide another fuel break.
“The fire first has to get past a road, then it would have to get up a hill that is kept irrigated and where the vegetation is kept to 18 inches max,” Balsamo said.
- A big reason for the fires in Palisades and Altadena were embers that flew miles before landing, often in vents.
“It used to be that home had a lot of vents, and that made it really hard to cool in the summer and heat in the winter,” Bullock said. “A lot of that ventilation has been removed from homes, and that really reduces the risk of embers getting into home through the vents.”
- The new homes have non-combustible roofs, indoor sprinklers and double-paned windows. Vinyl siding isn’t allowed because it contributes to fires spreading along exterior walls.
- Santa Ana winds are the biggest danger because it dries out the vegetation and helps spread embers, Bullock said.
When the Santa Ana winds kick up and humidity is low, a volunteer fire watch program of about 50 residents who have been trained go to high ground around the community to watch for fires.
“If there were a wildfire to start somewhere in the community, fire suppression would be done immediately in a way that also protects the wildlife and the species that are out there in danger,” Bullock said.
- For the 17,000 acres that won’t be developed, it has implemented a Habitat Reserve Wildland Fire Management Plan, which has been approved by the U.S. Fish & Wildlife Service.
About 150 cattle grazes on the open land.
“They take the grass down, which is another way to control fuel,” Balsamo said.
- Rancho Mission Viejo has also donated five acres to the Orange County Fire Authority for a fire station where they can store equipment to fight fires like bulldozers and helicopters as well as dormitories to house fire fighters from other areas.
- Wastewater is treated and pumped into a 5,000-acre-foot reservoir, which currently is about 90% full. That water is used to irrigate landscaping and can also be use for firefighting.
“Instead of any water going into the ocean, it’s a fully circular system,” Balsamo said.
A Layered Defense
These measures taken by Rancho Mission Viejo are a “layered defense,” according to Dave Winnacker, a former fire chief and co-founder of XyloPlan, which did the modeling for Milliman’s report on Rancho Mission Viejo.
“There is no silver bullet. When taken in aggregate, you can get inoculation,” he said.
An added benefit to Rancho Mission Viejo is that the community itself provides a buffer to downwind cities like San Juan Capistrano and Aliso Viejo, Winnacker said.
“The Ranch forms a durable buffer that protects downwind communities that don’t have” modern day fire prevention techniques. “We have pushed the wildfire edge back several miles.”
— Peter J. Brennan
The Looming Fire Insurance Problem
Rancho Mission Viejo wants to provide lower-priced homes starting in the $500,000 range.
A big emerging problem is fire insurance.
The state government has limited increases by insurance companies, causing some to pull out and an emerging shortage of affordable plans. Homeowners who need coverage to qualify for mortgages have been forced to go onto secondary markets where rates have more than doubled and are less regulated, executives said. They pointed out that condo complexes are particularly tricky because an insurance company might not want to take on the risk of insuring dozens or hundreds of units that might go up at one time.
The “high cost of condo fire insurance, if available, works against attainability,” according to Rancho Mission Viejo.
Fire insurance along with rising interest rates are the two biggest obstacles facing developers and homebuilders, according to Rancho Mission Viejo President Jeremy Laster.
“Those are the 2 big bullies that are coming around the corner,” Laster told the Business Journal.
— Peter J. Brennan
New Homes Prove Fire Resistant
Rancho Mission Viejo’s business deck provides remarkable statistics: Out of the 20 largest fires from 1932 to 2020, 17 have occurred since 2000. They ranged from 167,766 acres in the ASF Complex fire in 2020 to the August Complex fire that burned 1 million aces, also in 2020.
Exactly why is the subject of intense debate, from lack of clearing brush to downed power lines to the state bureaucracy to environmental lawsuits.
What has become clear is that a law of the California building code initially enacted in 2008, called Chapter 7A, has had a beneficial effect in preventing fires destroying new homes.
From 2017 to 2020, fires destroyed 10,582 homes in California. However, only 136 homes built after 2010 were destroyed while the remainder were built before 2010.
“It isn’t the newer communities like ours that are a problem,” Rancho Mission Viejo’s Jay Bullock said.
“99% of the homes that were destroyed were older homes that weren’t built to modern standards. The 1% of new homes that were destroyed were in the middle of a conflagration.”
— Peter J. Brennan
The Rancho’s Past, Present and Future
Rancho Mission Viejo dates to 1882, when San Franciscan James Flood, who was one of the investors in the famous Comstock silver mine, purchased a 200,000-acre parcel in Southern California. Flood sent Richard O’Neill Sr., an Irish immigrant who was a butcher and a bar keeper and a cattleman, to manage the parcel. O’Neill and eventually the Moiso family came to own the land. In 1942, they sold the southern part to the Navy, which converted it into Camp Pendleton and the remaining 52,000 acres became known as Rancho Mission Viejo.
In the 1960s, the Santa Ana (5) Freeway cut through the ranch, leading to the development of Mission Viejo. The developer in the late 1990s began implementing techniques to battle fires with the newer communities of Rancho Santa Margarita and Ladera Ranch.
In the past five decades, Rancho Mission Viejo has built 75,000 homes that house 225,000 people. Last month, it announced a $50 million donation to Providence Mission Hospital, which is located on land that the company donated in 1969.
In 2013, the company began developing its last big parcel — 23,000 acres. The county government gave permission for development on 6,000 acres if the remaining 17,000 would be kept as a natural reserve.
About 75% of the land was dedicated to “open space forever,” Mike Balsamo, the ranch’s senior vice president for government relations.
In essence, open land surrounds Rancho Mission Viejo, particularly on its eastern side. When the Santa Ana winds kick in from the east, the fire danger is heightened.
“You have to acknowledge the natural risks of being in an environment like that,” said Balsamo.
To date, it’s completed two villages, Sendero with 1,250 homes, and Esencia with 2,800 homes. The third village of Rienda is about half completed, 1,250 homes out of 2,500 planned. At the buildout, about 14,000 homes in total will be spread among another five to six villages.
The company is also planning on 5.2 million square feet of commercial space, including retail, office and light industrial. About 553,000 square feet has been completed to date.
“Our team has created a very livable community, a very walkable community,” said Rancho Mission Viejo President Jeremy Laster, who is the son-in-law of Rancho Mission Viejo Chairman Tony Moiso.
“When I drive home from work, I drive through two of our communities and there’s nothing better than seeing some kid playing catch with his parents or grandparents or being pushed on the swings or in a stroller.”
— Peter J. Brennan
