Learning to live with fire
Neighbors working with neighbors is crucial for protection from wildfires
To live in California is to live with fire. In dry years, the state burns. In wet years, when spring rains produce explosive growth of flammable native brush and grasses, the state burns. The wildfires sweeping Northern California today remind us that protecting your home from fire depends on you and your neighbor taking action to protect each other’s property from fire. The need for vigilance will become more acute as the climate changes.
On Thursday, Gov. Jerry Brown stood amid the Lake County hills scorched by the Rocky Fire, this year’s largest so far, to warn that Californians can expect more fire-ravaged landscape. The National Research Council calculates that for each 1 degree Celsius (1.8 degree Fahrenheit) of temperature increase, wildfire burn areas in the Western United States could quadruple. The all too familiar California summer scenes — towering columns of smoke, ridgelines etched by flame, blackened trees, yellow-coated firefighters wielding shovels, evacuated residents sleeping on cots in community shelters — will extend into spring and fall.
Apart from weather, people are the biggest factor in increased fire risk. More Californians live in fireprone areas, more homes are being built on the edge of wildlands and in forests, and 95 percent of fires that Cal Fire responds to are caused by people. SB1241, passed in 2012, seeks to ensure that new housing developments don’t increase fire risks. Counties now require “show me the fire protection” plans from developers, especially around water supply and road design, to win approval. “You want fire service personnel to get in and you want people to be able to come out,” said Keith Gilless, dean of UC Berkeley’s College of Natural Resources and chairman of the state Board of Forestry and Fire Protection.
As sensible as these rules might seem, they’ve been met with resistance from local communities because of increased costs, as has a state fire response fee imposed on rural homeowners. Yet, fire danger is growing, and communities must step up fire protection efforts. Communities need local fire prevention plans, a shared understanding of fire danger and collective will to take action to remove fire hazards.
Even in communities devastated by wildfire, it is often difficult to get neighbors to act. After a firestorm swept the Oakland hills in 1991, the city approved new building permits without widening the narrow roads that slowed fire personnel response. A community fight broke out this past spring when Oakland and two other local agencies received a $5.6 million federal grant to remove eucalyptus trees, a highly combustible species thought to have added to the severity of the fire. Neighbors and agencies broke into factions — “clear cut” versus “thin” — and the project landed in court.
“Some communities after disasters find the cohesiveness to straighten out problems,” said Cal Fire Chief Ken Pimlott, citing the work of residents of Pine Mountain Lake near Yosemite National Park who have worked to clear vegetation since the Rim Fire swept past their doors in 2013. For others, noted Gilless, “post-disaster vigilance has a half-life.”
Communities around the state need to learn to work together. State Fire Marshal Tanya Hoover noted that the Oakland hills burn every 25 years. The Tunnel Fire, as the fire that killed 25 and destroyed thousands of homes was called, was 24 years ago.