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This Week's Fire Weather
No fire weather watches or warnings for the East Bay interior as of Sunday. After a rare early-September storm cooled things off last week, the warm-up is real: low 70s Sunday, upper 80s for Labor Day and Tuesday, and low 90s by Wednesday, with light winds and cool nights. Air quality is forecast in the Good range for the Eastern Zone, with no Spare the Air alerts. A warm, dry holiday week in peak season; the Big Sur item below is the reminder of what that can mean.
Sources: NWS forecast for Orinda · Spare the Air 5-day forecast · SF Chronicle on last week's storm (Sep. 2, 2026)
The Deal That Died in Sacramento
For the last week of the legislative session, the biggest wildfire story in California was a fight over a single question: when a utility's equipment starts a catastrophic fire, who pays? Governor Newsom wanted to bar insurance companies from suing utilities to recover claim payouts, a practice called subrogation. Lawmakers refused. A narrower compromise, Senate Bill 492, was announced Saturday, August 29; utility stocks slid, the governor turned against his own deal, and on Tuesday, September 1, the Assembly let the session end without a vote. The bill died.
The next day, PG&E, our utility, said it will defer $2 billion of planned 2027 spending, while preserving critical safety programs and its wildfire mitigation commitments. Lawmakers have pledged fall hearings, and a special session is possible. For Lamorinda, this fight is not abstract: how utility-caused fire costs get allocated is one input into whether insurers regain confidence in communities like ours. Our full analysis covers what the bill would have done, what each side wants, and the parts a homeowner actually controls.
→ Read our analysis: what SB 492's collapse means for Lamorinda · The Insurance Crisis Hitting Lamorinda · Insurance Navigation Guide
Sources: KQED (Sep. 1, 2026) · CalMatters (Sep. 1, 2026) · Bay Area News Group (Sep. 2, 2026)
Community Bulletin
AM 1670 is back on the air. Lafayette's Community Information & Emergency Radio, offline for several weeks with technical issues, is broadcasting again at AM 1670. It's worth a preset button in the car: when cell networks are overloaded or the power is out, low-tech channels like this one keep working. Our Emergency Alert & Warning Systems playbook covers the full stack of channels every Lamorinda household should have switched on.
California has an official fire information app now. AwareCA, built for CAL FIRE by public safety software company Intterra, delivers incident updates verified by fire agencies themselves, with push notifications for nearby threats. It's free on the App Store and Google Play, with the official launch expected later this month. Think of it as a supplement to, not a replacement for, being registered with the county's Community Warning System, which is what actually calls your phone in an evacuation.
Orinda's fuel-reduction fund still has room. The city's August Measure R report shows the Fire Fuel Reduction Incentive Program has reimbursed 326 projects for a total of $229,910 this year, averaging $705 each, with a little over 40 percent of the $400,000 fund still available. The program reimburses Orinda residents for half of qualifying vegetation-work costs, up to $1,000; applicants report spending about $3,100 of their own money on average, so the reimbursement is a meaningful discount on real projects. The free chipper service hauled away another 230 cubic yards of brush in August. If tree and brush work is on your fall list, our tree trimming and arborist playbook covers the cut-and-prune side that fills the chipper pile.
Sources: City of Lafayette Weekly Roundup (Sep. 4, 2026) · San Diego Union-Tribune (Sep. 5, 2026) · AwareCA official site · City of Orinda, August Measure R At-A-Glance (Sep. 3, 2026)
One Thing to Do This Week
Register for the free Firescaping webinar. UC Master Gardeners Steve Danziger and Hedwig Van Den Broeck are presenting "Firescaping," an online session on creating a wildfire-resilient home and landscape, on Tuesday, September 15 from 6 to 7:30 p.m. It covers hardening your home, creating defensible space, and choosing and maintaining plants that help slow the spread of fire, and it's a rare chance to ask a trained expert about your specific yard, free, from your couch. Registration is required and closes at 11 a.m. the day of. One scheduling note: if you grabbed a seat in the fall CERT class we covered last week, the webinar overlaps with your first session, so plan for one or the other. Register online →
→ The Flammable Species Field Guide: plants to keep away from your house · Defensible Space Zones: The 0-1-2 System
Source: City of Lafayette Weekly Roundup (Sep. 4, 2026)
Around the Bay: Big Sur Is Burning
Two fires in Los Padres National Forest, the Timber Fire and the Plaskett Fire, had burned more than 54,000 combined acres along the Big Sur coast as of Thursday, with evacuation orders and warnings in parts of Monterey and San Luis Obispo counties and a stretch of Highway 1 closed near the county line. The Timber Fire was 23 percent contained; the Plaskett Fire, in steep terrain with limited access, just 19 percent. If a coastal trip is on your calendar, check closures before you drive. And at home, this is what early September looks like in a normal year: our Gold Protocol is the week-by-week routine built for exactly this stretch of the calendar.
Source: CBS News Bay Area (Sep. 4, 2026)
Where to Start if You're New Here
The best first step is the Home Fire Readiness Score, a 10-minute self-assessment that tells you where your home stands and what to prioritize. After that:
- The Big Three: roof, vents, and defensible space: the highest-priority moves for a Lamorinda home
- Gold Protocol: what to do each week from now through October
- Home Hardening Checklist: the full walk-around list of upgrades that make a home ember-resistant
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Lamorinda Ready is a community education resource. This newsletter is for general educational and informational purposes only and does not constitute legal, insurance, financial, construction, or emergency response advice. Legislative details, market figures, and fire statistics (acreage, containment, evacuation status) are as reported by the cited outlets between September 1 and 5, 2026 and will have changed since; consult official sources for current status. Program amounts and availability for Orinda's Measure R incentives are from the city's August 2026 report; confirm current eligibility and fund status with the City of Orinda before starting work. Always consult qualified professionals and official agencies (MOFD, ConFire, your city) before making decisions about your home or property. Content available through links in this newsletter is subject to the same limitations.
Header photo: the California State Capitol in Sacramento, by Quintin Soloviev, via Wikimedia Commons, CC BY 4.0.
Lamorinda Ready
Practical resilience for Lafayette, Moraga, and Orinda.
1480 Moraga Rd Ste C #188, Moraga, CA 94556