On Wednesday, the Reno City Council discussed and approved the 2026 Community Wildfire Protection Plan.
The plan will guide wildfire mitigation efforts within the City of Reno and surrounding wildland-urban interface areas over the next five years.
It will be updated every five years after that.
They say the plan also aligns with the council's goal of enhancing public safety and that there will be no fiscal impact associated with its acceptance.
Ultimately, the plan will benefit the community, according to the Reno Fire Department.
Talina Sky, Fire Inspector for the City of Reno Fire Department, says, "The community wildfire protection plan is beneficial to Reno Fire because it helps us develop a framework for projects that need to be implemented for fuel mitigation."
They say this new plan helps them with their future planning as well.
They told us the last plan they had was countywide in 2005. However, in the past 20 years, a lot has changed since the city has grown and expanded into the wildland-urban interface.
The biggest difference between the old plan and the new one is how much the community has changed.
Sky says, "We've grown and expanded. We've grown into that wildland-urban interface. So some of the risks we may have may be higher in some areas."
Some other differences are that they can now track work that has been done from 2005 up to the present day, which helps them with planning to target areas to reduce hazards.
They also mentioned this plan will help fill critical gaps, which can mean several things.
"We're talking about collaboration with partners. When we look at some of the land that we have, we may have land that's owned by the city that's bordering, for example, Forest Service land. So together we can fill those gaps and collaborate and plan together on how we can mitigate risks in those areas," Sky tells us.
Since this plan has not been updated in over 20 years, they're filling in the gap with an updated document that has recommendations that are more current.
If residents in the City of Reno want to have a better idea of what their risks are where they're currently living, they can visit their hub site to find out what their wildfire risks may be by clicking the link here.
They mention there are areas of Reno that are at higher risk for fires.
Sky lists a few. "Northwest Reno, the Peavine area, along with Caughlin, where we've seen previous fire history, and so we really want to focus on educating homeowners in those areas on practices of defensible space and home hardening that they can implement to be more prepared for wildfires."
The greatest importance is as simple as having a plan in place.
"This is not only a huge benefit for the City of Reno Fire, but also for homeowners. The resources that are available are really going to make homeowners more prepared for wildfires."
Sky says the process of creating this plan was funded through a FEMA Fire Prevention Safety grant, but Reno Fire did not make this a reality on their own. They worked with multiple other agencies and with the community.
