Lawmakers focus on fire prevention as blazes rage statewide

Amid a relentless onslaught of horrific wildfires, state lawmakers found it easy Tuesday to pinpoint the most important response: Reduce the fuel feeding the conflagrations that have scorched more than 750,000 acres this year.

But making that happen, on a meaningful scale, is fraught with problems, they found.

“Obviously, we are in - again - one of the most devastating and destructive fire seasons,” Cal Fire Director Ken Pimlott told the 10-member bipartisan committee charged with crafting a legislative response by the end of the month.

As Pimlott spoke, at least ?15 active wildfires were raging from Shasta County to San Diego County, and he wore a black band on his badge memorializing the Utah firefighter killed Monday while battling the Mendocino Complex fires, the largest in state history.

“The risks are real; the challenges are real,” Pimlott said.

The hearing also came on a day when Reps. Mike Thompson, D-St. Helena, and Jared Huffman, D-San Rafael, announced that California had been awarded $99 million in federal funds that must be spent on disaster recovery in Sonoma County, part of the city of Napa, Clearlake, Redwood Valley and other areas hit by the 2017 wildfires.

“Our district was and continues to be hit hard by fires, but together we are coming back even stronger,” Thompson said, adding the funds will “help those who need it the most recover and rebuild.”

John Laird, the state Natural Resources Agency secretary, provided perspective for the increasingly painful fire season that is still months away from its typical peak following the end of a long, dry summer.

“Fire in this state is non-negotiable. It’s part of the ecosystem,” he said. “Either we manage our forests for low-intensity fires or we experience larger and longer fires.”

The title of Tuesday’s committee session - Wildfire Fuels Reduction Hearing - captured the lawmakers’ focus, summarized by Assemblyman Brian Dahle, a Republican from Lassen County whose district includes the area hit by the Carr fire.

“The No. 1 factor, if we reduce the fuel, period, the fires won’t be as intense,” he said. “That’s the goal of the Legislature.”

And the means for doing so are also well known: vegetation management, which includes thinning forests grown dense after a century focused on fire suppression, along with prescribed burning, which Pimlott acknowledged is risky even as Cal Fire expanded the burns to cover 19,000 acres in the past year.

Fuel reduction also means getting residents to establish “defensible space” around their homes, especially in urban areas that border wildlands, and “hardening” their houses against fire by means that include installing dual-pane windows to withstand heat.

Financial assistance might be needed to advance that goal, lawmakers said.

State Sen. Jeff Stone, a Riverside County Republican, said that tree and brush clearing likely saved lives during the Cranston fire that blackened more than 13,000 acres in his district.

“We’re getting a lot of good work done,” Pimlott said.

But Assemblyman Jim Wood, a Santa Rosa Democrat whose district was hit heavily in the October wildfires, said that a critical ingredient - a commitment to long-term funding for fire prevention - is missing.

“I don’t see how we can accomplish what we need in California without it,” he said.

Gov. Jerry Brown’s budget had a one-year funding for fire prevention, Wood said, but his bill to spend $250 million per year failed to pass.

“We have to get it,” said William Craven, chief consultant to the Senate Natural Resources and Water Committee.

And there was a sharp divide among witnesses over the role of biomass power plants in coping with wildfire fuel, including the 129 million dead and dying trees on state wildlands.

Rich Gordon, president of the California Forestry Association, said biomass facilities, which burn woody waste and generate power, are a logical solution.

“Better than pile burning, certainly better than wildfires,” he said, responding to the notion that biomass pollutes the air.

Biomass plants could become more efficient and closed plants could be reopened, he said, if more of the raw material were available.

But a Sierra Club representative criticized the idea, saying many of the dead trees are inaccessible and that hauling wood from the Sierra and burning it in a Central Valley biomass plant was unfair to people near the plant.

Biomass energy is 98 percent less polluting than wildfires or controlled burns, Gordon said.

Wood, Dahle and Assemblyman Chad Mayes, a San Bernardino County Republican, bristled at the Sierra Club’s position.

“People have died in our state because of overgrown forest,” Mayes said. “If biomass isn’t the answer, what do we do about that?”

You can reach Staff Writer Guy Kovner at 707-521-5457 or guy.kovner@pressdemocrat.com. On Twitter @guykovner.