Report details just who was affected in Malibu’s latest emergency
In an effort to examine the vulnerabilities and resilience of Malibu during the Franklin Fire, the California Department of Forestry and Fire Protection (Cal Fire), an education and wildfire prevention agency, released a report detailing who was affected in last week’s wildfire.
The information, which appears gleaned from 2020 US Census data, reflects the decreased population lost due to the more than 450 homes destroyed in 2018’s Woolsey Fire that displaced hundreds of residents still yet to return to Malibu due to the lengthy rebuild process for many.
According to Cal Fire’s Franklin Incident page, 5,640 Malibu residents were affected by the blaze that ignited after 11 p.m. Monday, Dec. 9.
That number accounts for 1,440 households with an average of 2.37 persons each under evacuation orders. The page reports the median age of the occupants of these households to be 24.6 years old with an unemployment rate at 6.8 percent. Of course, the page does not explain that some of these unemployed residents could be retirees. In the affected area, most of the households have internet access with a total of 5,054 homes equipped. As electricity was shut off with a Public Safety Power Shutoff (PSPS) that evening, it’s not certain whether much of those households while wired forinternet actually could access the important communication tool. Of those households, 1,323 are reported to have computers.
The emergency would have played out different had the Franklin Fire broken out during daylight hours. The affected zone has a daytime population of 9,769 people, which could have complicated an evacuation on Pacific Coast Highway by adding nearly double the number of cars on the roadway. With 793 businesses in the area, more chaos may have ensued in an effort to quickly wrap up the day’s work. The report claims there are 6,045 employees that would have been working during business hours, many of them could be work-from-home Malibu residents. Workers were categorized as 1,924 white-collar workers, 153 blue-collar workers, and 441 service workers.
At-risk populations were defined as 169 residents with a disability, 867 over the age of 65, and 27 households without a vehicle. There are reportedly 104 veterans in the area. The majority of the population is listed between the ages of 19 to64.
Luckily, as the Franklin Fire erupted in the overnight hours, children were not at school. The number of school children living in the burn area includes 50 identified as nursery and preschool-aged, 16 kindergarteners, 79 in grades 1 through 4, 129 in grades 5 through 8, and 163 in grades 9 through 12. The report does not mention college-aged young adults even though a map on the Cal Fire demographic page appears to include Pepperdine University which was clearly in the burn zone. Pepperdine’s campus situated on 830 acres is technically its own census-designated place located in unincorporated Los Angeles. It does not share Malibu’s 90265 zip code.
The highest number of homes built in the area is 406 constructed between 1980 to 1989. Three hundred and fifty-one homes were built between 1970 to 1979, 312 were built between 1990 to 1999, and 308 were built between 1950 to 1959. Two hundred and fifty-three homes were constructed from 1960 to 1969, 221 from 2000 to 2009, 172 homes from 1939 or earlier, 83 from 1940 to 1949, and 57 built between 2010 to 2019.
The majority of the households, at 3,973, are English-speaking-only households. Spanish speakers comprise 348 households, followed by 394 Asian-Pacific Island speakers, 336 Indo-European-speaking households, and 123 households of other language speakers.
The information is available at www.fire.ca.gov/incidents/2024.