Santa Clara County may ramp up wildfire prevention efforts
Fire officials want to buy refurbished helicopter, bulldozers and other tools
SAN JOSE >> With more than 550,000 acres of wilderness full of flammable dead trees and dense, dry brush, Santa Clara County Fire Department officials say one team should manage them to prevent wildfires instead of the current patchwork of government fire agencies.
That wildfire management team would be responsible for clearing vegetation along roads by using bulldozers and spraying herbicides. Fire officials also want to spend an estimated $9 million to buy heavy equipment, including a refurbished helicopter, bulldozers and other tools so they don’t have to rely on other counties during major fires.
Authorities believe the kind of deadly wildfires that leveled communities such as Paradise and Santa Rosa in recent years are likely to happen again. According to a new Santa Clara County Fire Department report, the last 10 fire seasons have seen seven of California’s most destructive wildfires ever.
“The fire environment we are currently experiencing (is) driven by dry, dense vegetation, hotter and drier weather, and locally-approved development that has built communities within the wildland areas,” Santa Clara County Fire Chief Tony Bowden said in a presentation to Board of Supervisors last week.
If greenhouse gas emissions continue to rise, the average burn area statewide would increase 77 percent by the end of the century, according to a state report on climate change risk.
County fire agencies historically have largely coordinated plans for responding to wildfires but haven’t developed a strategy to prevent them, Bowden said, adding that “wildfires do not respect jurisdictional boundaries.”
Unincorporated wildlands at the county’s edges are at the greatest risk of wildfires, particularly along the western stretch from Saratoga down to Gilroy.
“These beautiful hills are also beautiful fuel,” said Supervisor Cindy Chavez, who in December requested that the county study the issue follow
ing the deadly Camp Fire in Butte County, which killed 86 people last year, most of them seniors.
She expressed concern about information cited in Bowden’s report that only half as much local government resources are available through the mutual aid system today than 15 years ago.
“Fewer departments are allowing for mutual aid because they already are so stretched — the implications of that is there will be less help for communities up and down the state,” Chavez said. “So we’d better figure out how to be on the preventative end of this issue.”
The California Department of Forestry and Fire Protection, better known as Cal Fire, has pledged to ramp up efforts to thin vegetation in areas with a high wildfire risk.
But the task is daunting; one expert told the Public Policy Institute of California in 2015 the state will need to increase fuel reduction efforts tenfold to avoid intense fires that could permanently convert the ecology of viable forests to shrublands.
While special equipment is often shared through the mutual aid system, when more than one major fire is burning at once, they are stretched thin.
“When the Camp Fire broke out in Butte County, within hours of that fire starting in Northern California, two major fires started in Ventura and Los Angeles,” said Fire Captain Bill Murphy, a spokesman for the department. “What we’ve faced is that (mutual aid) system is strained, and…you literally had resources that were driving from Southern California to assist.”
To cover its 550,000 acres of wildlands, Santa Clara County has three water trucks, known as water tenders. It doesn’t own a helicopter or bulldozer, although Cal Fire has a helicopter near Los Gatos and a bulldozer in Morgan Hill.
Cars traveling in rural areas are also a common cause of wildland fires, sparking flames in grass and weeds close to roadways. That’s why county fire wants to spray herbicides along roads in high fire hazard areas. Its plan doesn’t identify a specific herbicide or areas for spraying, however.
Bowden is asking for $1.2 million this fiscal year and $1.3 million the following year to hire staff for a wildfire management department, plus $437,500 to cover one-time costs for equipment such as vehicles, a fire engine, fire detection cameras and other heavy equipment to remove brush and trees.
In the future, the agency is proposing to add 32 positions to do seasonal fire control, at an estimated annual cost of $3,179,492.
Bowden will return to the board with a more detailed spending plan in coming months.