Blog note: this article references a grand jury report.
With more crews and bigger plans for prevention in response to an ever-increasing fire threat, Marin fire officials said they are ready to aggressively clear vegetation and educate the public on how to prepare and respond.
“Fire season is starting earlier and lasting longer, and the big ones aren’t necessarily happening in the traditional summer months,” said Marin County fire Battalion Chief Graham Groneman, who pointed to the Thomas Fire in December 2017 and the Camp Fire that burned through November 2018 as examples. “The fact is, we can have these devastating wildfires any time of year, and we need to be ready.”
Groneman said the Marin County Fire Department has hired 105 seasonal firefighters to help out over the summer, representing a 15% increase over the seasonal hires from years past.
With approximately 69,000 Marin homes within the high-risk fire zone called the wildland-urban interface — where residences are up against open space — there is a lot of ground to cover.
“We have a much bigger emphasis on defensible space inspections and we really want to bolster our wildland and fire suppression response as well as our fire crew staffing,” Groneman said. “It’s a multifaceted approach to manage the fuel load but also have a force that can jump on our engines to respond to a call.”
Next week, for example, fire crews will be doing a controlled burn at the Old St. Hilary’s Open Space Preserve in the hills above Tiburon. If conditions are appropriate, the burns will be from 9:30 a.m. to 3 p.m. Monday through Wednesday.
Tiburon fire and Marin County Parks crews are assisting the county fire department to burn approximately 150 piles of cut acacia plants. Officials warn that there will be visible smoke and lots of fire crew activity around the Vistazo West Street area.
“We do our best to get the word out in advance, so people aren’t alarmed about a wildfire or inundating our 9-1-1 dispatchers,” Marin County fire Battalion Chief Christie Neill said in a statement.
Pacific Gas and Electric Co. is also beefing up its effort to clear vegetation in high fire-risk areas over several years, said Tony Walls, supervising manager of PG&E’s enhanced vegetation management program.
Walls presented a preview of the plan to the San Rafael City Council Monday, outlining high priority areas where there is risk of dead, dying or diseased trees that could fall into PG&E power lines and facilities.
In San Rafael, this includes areas in neighborhoods such as Dominican/Black Canyon, Glenwood, neighborhoods bordering Peacock Gap and the North San Pedro Ridge, Bret Harte, Lincoln/San Rafael Hill and near Sun Valley.
“Annually to mitigate that risk, we prune or remove about 1.4 million trees throughout our system,” he said, noting that there are more than 100 million trees in PG&E’s territory, which includes Marin and the North Bay counties.
Crews attempt to maintain trees at least 4 feet away from conductors, he said. When a tree approaches that threshold, crews will trim them back 12 feet.
Deanna Contreras, spokeswoman for PG&E, said crews annually inspect every segment of approximately 100,000 miles of overhead electric power lines, with some locations patrolled multiple times a year. The estimated cost for the agency’s enhanced wildfire safety plan is $1.7 billion to $2.3 billion.
“We’ve nearly doubled the amount of money we’re spending on vegetation management to reduce power outages and wildfire risks,” she said.
PG&E is planning an open house to present its vegetation management plan at 6 p.m. July 30 at the Embassy Suites at 101 McInnis Parkway in San Rafael.
San Rafael fire Chief Chris Gray outlined on Monday the city’s response to the Marin County Civil Grand Jury report that recommended the creation of a joint powers authority to coordinate wildfire preparedness and a quarter-cent sales tax to help fund preparedness efforts.
“While we’re working cooperatively with the county … we’re not stopping our efforts to prevent a wildfire from spreading in the community,” Gray said, noting currently they’ve deployed goats to graze San Rafael Hill and there are crews creating fuel breaks in the city’s open space.
Gray said that all Marin municipalities were submitting a joint response, but he was recommending that the city highlight the new wildfire prevention action plan recently approved by the City Council.
San Rafael residents said they asked that the city focus its efforts on educating the public on fire safety in general, but also hardening homes with defensible space and fire-resistant materials.
“Speaking on behalf of the community, I think we are all indebted to the work that (the fire department) is doing,” Mayor Gary Phillips said. “We’re not sitting here on our hands talking about this stuff, but (firefighters are) actually out there doing things, and we’ll be accelerating that as time and resources permit.”
June 21, 2019
Marin Independent Journal
By Adrian Rodriguez
No comments:
Post a Comment