When policy puts firefighters at risk

August 15, 2026

Shannon Kessler

OPINION by SHANNON KESSLER

The Timber Fire is burning in the steep, rugged country of the Los Padres National Forest and the Ventana Wilderness. Hotshot crews are hiking miles into exceptionally steep terrain with almost no fire roads to support them.

That’s not just difficult terrain; it is the predictable result of decades of policy choices that treat road access and practical fire management as secondary to an extreme vision of protection.

I know this country. As a frequent hiker in southern Big Sur and the Los Padres National Forest, particularly around the Nacimiento-Fergusson Road area, I know that this single public, through road is a lifeline. It gives crews a way in, gives communities a way out, and gives the land a chance when fires or winter storms hit.

We need more practical, well-maintained fire and access roads—not freeways or sprawl—that help both people and nature survive the frequent catastrophic fires and road washouts that have become a regular part of life in Big Sur.

I support fire roads because I want the people who protect this landscape to come home alive. Properly maintained fire roads and fuel breaks let crews get in, dig lines, and evacuate safely. They reduce the risk to firefighters working miles from the nearest road and give the forest a fighting chance against high-intensity fires that destroy entire ecosystems.

Protecting people and protecting wilderness are not opposites, though extreme green ideology treats them as such.

The combination of wilderness designations, NEPA processes, coastal-zone rules, and chronic under-maintenance has left the backcountry road network sparse and degraded. While the land has always been steep, policy has made reliable vehicle access increasingly rare. That is the reality crews battling the Timber Fire face right now.

My opponent, Dawn Addis, has built a record aligned with the most aggressive environmental scorekeepers in California, earning perfect scores from California environmental voters and a hall of fame designation.

She has authored and championed bills like the Polluters Pay Climate Superfund Act, which targets oil companies, while the regulatory framework she supports continues to constrain the very tools—roads, thinning, and aggressive vegetation management—that keep communities and firefighters safe. She has consistently voted for an environmental agenda that prioritizes process, litigation, and “untrammeled” landscapes over practical access and fuel reduction in the wildland-urban interface.

That agenda may sound noble in Sacramento press releases, but on the ground in Big Sur, it means hotshots carrying heavy packs up slopes with limited support, longer response times, and higher risk for the people we ask to risk everything.

As a Central Coast mom, small business owner, and lifelong resident of this region, I believe we can manage our forests and coastal mountains with both care and competence.

That means maintaining and improving fire access so crews are not forced into 1930s-style hand work in 2026 conditions. It means treating catastrophic fire and repeated road failures as the direct threats they are to people, homes, and the landscapes environmentalists claim to love.

Values debates are easy when you never have to hike the line. They become something else entirely when a firefighter is five miles from the nearest road, and the fire is active. I will always put the safety of those men and women, and the communities they protect, ahead of ideological purity.

The Central Coast deserves leaders who understand that real protection includes the people who do the protecting, and the roads that make that protection possible.

Shannon Kessler is the Republican nominee for California Assembly District 30.