San Francisco Chronicle - (Sunday)
Foothills cities fight to fend off disasters
GRASS VALLEY, Nevada County — When Josiah Johnston and his wife, Kate Wilkin, hung flyers around their neighborhood last year, they didn’t know how many people might respond to their invitation to discuss fire safety. The couple, who had moved to the Sierra foothills from the Bay Area, wanted to reduce their risk of wildfire, especially with a newborn son. Although their home sits near thick forest and sees an occasionally menacing wind, they quickly learned that even longtime residents of the area hadn’t given serious thought to the
danger — at least until the Camp Fire destroyed a similarly vulnerable community in Butte County in November. “We soon had more people showing up than can fit in someone’s living room,” said Wilkin, 37, as she stood on the back deck of her ranchstyle house on a recent morning. She still hadn’t located a space big enough for the next planned safety meeting. “People are concerned after last year. They’re eager to find ways to be part of the solution.”
As another fire season looms, here in the small city of Grass Valley, as in much of Gold Country where historic mining towns nestle up to sprawling, wooded mountains, things are different this year. What used to be a leisurely wind down to summer, marked by high school graduations and the excitement of vacation, has become a rush to action.
Residents want to make sure their community isn’t the next Paradise.
In Wilkin’s neighborhood, a leafy area up the hill from the restaurants and tourist shops of central Grass Valley, people gather to help each other clear flammable brush around homes. On the edges of town, firefighting crews wield chain saws to trim dense stands of timber that could funnel flames into backyards.
Even in downtown, where there’s little chance of a wildfire breaking out, fire prevention is promoted at a movie theater, which airs a 30second trailer before films to encourage preparedness.
“It’s unfortunate that it took the Camp Fire to shake everybody a little bit, but it really has,” said Jamie Jones, executive director of the Fire Safe Council of Nevada County, a nonprofit dedicated to protecting the region from fire. Jones, who was born and raised in the area, acknowledged that even she has become more attuned to the threat, only recently packing an emergency “gobag” for her family of five.
“And this was my job,” she said, astonished at her own irresponsibility. Whether a newfound commitment to safety will be enough to prevent the kind of catastrophe that played out an hour and a half north in Paradise, where 85 people died and 14,000 homes were lost in the Camp Fire, remains to be seen.
Conditions that triggered the state’s worst wildfire still linger. Decades of fire suppression in California have left a buildup of vegetation that’s ripe for burning, while global warming has increased the likelihood of flames.
Grass Valley is about 60 miles northeast of Sacramento near the vast Tahoe National Forest. Towering ponderosa pines and fragrant cedars extend into town from the Sierra Nevada above.
The city of 13,000 is one of 189 communities the state considers at significant risk of wildfire. Such places, located in Cal Fire’s “very high fire hazard severity zones,” tend to be at the edge of volatile wildlands. They include Gold Rush towns, hilly parts of the Bay Area and large swaths of Southern California. Paradise is also on the list.
The state has long advised these communities to be vigilant, and this year it is intensifying the warning. Fire experts say the wet winter produced a surplus of combustible flora. Already, Pacific Gas and Electric Co. has turned to temporary power shutoffs to make sure its wires don’t send sparks into the ready tinder.
In Grass Valley, the biggest fear is a strong north wind. Firefighters say powerful gusts could carry a blaze from the surrounding forest into town, much like what happened in Paradise when last fall’s firestorm blew through so quickly that many fleeing in cars stood no chance of escape.
“The Camp Fire had velocity and a head of steam coming out of a canyon. This is the nightmare scenario for any of our communities,” said Mark Buttron, fire chief for Grass Valley, whose agency lays claim to being the thirdoldest Fire Department still active west of the Mississippi.
At a town hall meeting in nearby Nevada City, where Buttron also oversees a paid fire service, the chief was swamped with questions about what to do if such a fire hits.
“Does it make sense to go sit in the creek?”
“How about a respirator? Are they going to melt during a fire?”
“Which evacuation route should we use?”
Buttron told the dozens gathered at City Hall that every wildfire is unique and demands a different response.
“These are tough decisions. I can’t tell you exactly what to do,” he said, recommending only that people stay smart and aware during a fire.
In the meantime, Buttron and other civic leaders are focused on preparations. Last year Grass Valley voters overwhelmingly approved a 1% sales tax to boost services, allowing the city’s roster of firefighters to begin growing from 17 to 21. Smaller Nevada City has plans to add one firefighter.
Additionally, both cities have passed ordinances that require homeowners to keep their yards in tiptop shape during fire season — no grass above 4 inches tall on lots less than an acre and all tree limbs pruned on the first 6 feet of the trunk. City officials can fine scofflaws.
In Nevada City, the vice mayor started a crowdsourcing initiative to get livestock to eat hazardous underbrush. The campaign was dubbed “Goat Fund Me.”
Fire prevention work extends to the forests around Grass Valley, which buzz with the steady hum of chain saws.
On a recent afternoon at Empire Mine State Historic Park, where 367 miles of underground shafts once unearthed California’s gold, state firefighters used saws and axes to thin oak and pine.
These groves of trees near the mine represent one of the city’s biggest fire hazards. Should a blaze descend from the hills above, the park’s timber would offer a direct path of fuel into town.
“Our charge used to be working on old buildings and protecting the natural landscape,” said Matt Green, superintendent of the California State Parks Sierra District, who oversees Empire Mine. “Now we’re on the fuel break side of the business. It never used to be like this.”
A Cal Fire crew of about a dozen firefighters sheared saplings and brush while leaving behind bigger trees and most of the forest canopy. Their selective trimming is intended to revitalize the wildlands — not log them — and slow the advance of a potential burn.
On the other side of Grass Valley, near several churches and old bridges, fire officials are planning a similar fuel break, designed to choke off a wildfire from the opposite direction.
The 1,237acre “defense zone” west of town is one of 35 projects statewide that Gov. Gavin Newsom is fasttracking to help avert another deadly year of flames. Over the next five years, the state is pouring an unprecedented $1 billion into vegetation management.
The funding only goes so far, however.
Jeff Pettit, head of Nevada County’s Office of Emergency Services, has won some state money but doesn’t have nearly enough for his todo list, which includes roadside clearing, treechipping and more fuel breaks.
“We’re a rural county. We’re not rich,” Pettit said. “We’re doing a lot more than most counties in the state, but we still have a large lift here.”
He credits the community for helping to try to pick up the slack.
Wilkin and Johnston’s neighborhood north of downtown Grass Valley held its first fire prevention meeting in December.
The couple had moved from Berkeley just before a series of fires in 2017 almost torched their new community — the same wave of winddriven blazes that ravaged Wine Country. Many in the area also remember the nearby 49er Fire in 1988.
It was the Camp Fire, though, that proved the turning point for the neighborhood.
“I’d like to be safe and not quite as anxious, and we have a new baby now,” Johnston said, recalling his motivation for starting the Washington/Hill Neighborhood Fire Coalition a month after Paradise burned. “I’m hoping that this area continues to be lucky and doesn’t have a catastrophic fire. … But if you plan for the worst and hope for the best,” you’re better off.
Johnston and his wife, with 10monthold Devlin at their side, have coordinated about a halfdozen safety meetings since last year’s kickoff.
About 50 participating households have put together a community evacuation plan, a buddy system for alerting and aiding older residents in the event of a fire, and at least one weekend of neighborhood brush clearing.
Johnston, 38, who works as a data scientist, even won a $500 grant for the vegetation removal. He’s also created a website for the group.
Wilkin lends fire expertise to the coalition. She’s employed by the University of California’s Cooperative Extension program as a natural resource adviser. At home, she’s put her knowhow to use preparing the yard to resist flames, recently removing a lattice that was covered in a blanket of ignitable pine needles.
“People are working hard, but there’s a lot to do,” she said. She admits that the unremitting fire danger has her secondguessing her move to Grass Valley to start a family. “I don’t know if I would have made the decision today.”
Daniel Berlant, an assistant deputy director of Cal Fire who lives in Gold Country, said he’s never seen people mobilize like this year.
“I don’t think it’s business as usual anymore,” he said. “I think a lot of these little towns that sit in highhazard areas are making changes. The Camp Fire really was a wakeup call.”
Grass Valley Mayor Lisa Swarthout said her community has had no choice. As an elected official, her top priority has been public safety and she has encouraged the city to confront its vulnerability.
“I feel like people are very scared,” she said. “But you can’t live your life in fear. You do what you need to do, and you do the best you can.”