Governor Newsom calls on CAL FIRE to update fire hazard zone map

WASHINGTON, D.C. (KION) -- Last week, Governor Gavin Newsom signed an executive order to prepare for future urban firestorms.

The order is after a series of fires that raged through Los Angeles County in January.

Gov. Newsom will direct CAL FIRE Office of the State Fire Marshall to release updated Fire Severity Zone Maps.

This will add 1.4 million acres of land to the map into two higher tiers of fire severity.

Gov. Newsom released a statement stating that the latest fires were not "new lesson," but rather the "latest lessons" in how urban firestorms can devastate communities.

"To meet the needs of increasingly extreme weather, where decades-old buildings weren’t planned and designed for today’s realities, these proposals are part of a bigger state strategy to build wildfire and forest resilience from forest management to huge investments in firefighting personnel and equipment, community hardening, and adopting state-of-the-art response technologies," Newsom continued in his statement.