Work begins in East Bay hills to prevent spread of wildfires
It’s hard, back-breaking work, sawing brush and whacking weeds in the East Bay hills in 90-degree-plus heat.
But that’s what about 50 firefighters have been doing every day — including weekends — from 8 a.m. to 5 p.m. in Lafayette and Orinda. More are expected to join the effort, which aims to remove as much vegetation as possible to prevent the spread of wildfires.
“It’s laborious work; it’s difficult,” said Jim Call of the Moraga-orinda Fire District, project manager of the North Orinda Shaded Fuel Break, who was supervising a work crew in the Lafayette hills last week. “They’re doing it all with hand tools — chain saws, weed whackers, pull saws — and a lot of that is because we can’t get heavy equipment in there, and the heavy equipment is damaging to the environment.”
The area covers 1,515 acres and 14 miles of open space between the eastern part of Tilden Regional Park in Berkeley and Pleasant Hill Road near Acalanes High School in Lafayette.
The area is vulnerable to fires because it is known for its autumn foehn winds, commonly called “Diablo winds” — the same ones that spread the deadly and destructive 1991 East Bay hills firestorm and other nearby major fires. Similar to the Santa Ana winds in Southern California, they are characteristically hot, dry offshore winds that have contributed to some of the state’s most destructive fires and can drive megafires.
Call said the Cal Fire fuels crew and the California Conservation Corps began the work on July 8 and Chico-based Wildland Fire Suppression joined them on July 15.
The crews are removing the lighter fuels such as grass and brush and leaving the canopies of the trees intact because they help grass from regrowing. That’s one reason the project is known as a “shaded” fuel break, Call said.
“It’s called a fuel break as opposed to a fire break because we’re removing the fuel,” Call said. “It doesn’t prevent a fire; it slows the intensity of a fire so crews can get in there and stop it.”
Contra Costa County Fire Protection, Moraga-orinda Fire District, Cal Fire, East Bay Municipal Utility District and East Bay Regional Park District are all working on the fuel break project, which Moraga-orinda is supervising.
The fuel break is designed to help protect people throughout the East Bay from a wildfire approaching from open space to the north and northeast.
According to Fire Chief Dave Winnacker of the Moraga-orinda Fire District, the following communities will be protected by the project: Berkeley, Oakland, Emeryville, Piedmont, Acalanes Ridge, Lafayette, Alamo, Martinez, Albany, Moraga, Alhambra Valley, Orinda, Canyon, Pacheco, Castle Hill, Pinole, Concord, Pleasant Hill, Contra Costa Centre, Reliez Valley, East Richmond Heights, Richmond, El Cerrito, San Miguel, El Sobrante, Saranap, Hercules, Shell Ridge, Kensington and Walnut Creek.
When the brush is all cleared out around the end of August, the project will enter its second phase — removing trees along the path — in the fall and winter, according to Winnacker.
Call said dead, dying and unhealthy trees as well as invasive plant species will be removed.
And once the tree removal is completed, Winnacker said, the firefighters will do maintenance work along the fuel break next year and in the coming years.
“Once we get this initial treatment done in fuel mitigation work, it’s much easier to maintain,” Call said.
Up to now, Call said, only homeowners associations and private property owners have cleared specific areas or drainage areas.
“We’re talking about 14 miles,” Call said. “That hasn’t been done before.”
Call stressed the importance of the fuel break.
“This is such an important project,” he said. “I’m glad to be part of it, especially after all the disastrous wildland fires we’ve had over the past three years. This really has to become the new paradigm shift, that we need to do fuel mitigation.”
The work is part of the North Orinda Shaded Fuel Break, a $4 million project and one of Cal Fire’s list of 35 high-priority fuel reduction projects aimed at protecting more than 200 of the state’ s most wild fire vulnerable communities.
Other high-priority items in the Cal Fire report, issued earlier this year, included the following Bay Area projects:
• Creating a shaded fuel break on Kings Mountain Road above Woodside in San Mateo County.
• Establishing shaded fuel break along Highway 17 between the Lexington Reservoir and Santa Cruz County.
• Cutting eucalyptus trees at Quarry Park in El Granada in San Mateo County.
“They’re not ranked — those are the 35 high-priority projects for the state of California, not in any rank order,” Cal Fire spokesman Jake Hesf said. “Those are all equally important — from the bottom to the top.”
Hesf said Cal Fire came up with the list, based on criteria, including population, or how many people were at risk in a wildfire; trail access and number of roads leading out of the area; as well as the number of commuters traveling through an area.
The Cal Fire report identified the 35 priority projects that “can be implemented immediately to help reduce the public safety risk for over 200 communities,” according to the department’s report to Gov. Gavin Newsom earlier this year.
In April, Cal Fire announced that more than $43 million would be awarded to fund 66 local fire prevention projects across the state. The North Orinda Shaded Fuel Break project is being funded by the state grants.
“These projects are designed to slow down a fire,” Hesf said. “They’re not designed or equipped to just interrupt Mother Nature. These projects are designed to give a community time to get out and give firefighters the opportunity to keep a fire in check a little bit longer — so we can get in there. They’re certainly not a magic bullet, so people can just remain in their homes when we have a head fire in the East Bay hills. That’s not the case.”
Hesf likened the fuel break projects to “painting the Golden Gate Bridge” and said Cal Fire will be maintaining these projects on an annual basis to make sure that the fuels for a fire are kept in check.
Call noted that the North Orinda Shaded Fuel Break project crews are all equipped with firefighting tools, including water pumps and fire extinguishers, in case a small fire starts during their work clearing the brush.
Call also noted that a state-mandated archaeologist surveyed the project, looking for historic sites and settlements, Native American signs and remains.
“We don’t want to unknowingly disturb something,” Call said. He also said a biologist is on hand to accompany the work crews, looking for sensitive habitat.
In the event of a red flag warning or a fire warning, work on the project will be halted, Call said.