As fire season looms, here’s what’s happening to reduce fire risk in Santa Rosa’s favorite park

With fire raging across New Mexico, many in drought-stricken California are likely holding their breath for what our own fire season will bring. Indeed, a vegetation fire in Southern California sparked Wednesday burned at least 20 homes and 195 acres in its first day.

Last week, Cal Fire said firefighters are bracing for what could be “the absolute worst” fire season, with especially heightened risk throughout Northern California starting in June, according to a May seasonal outlook report from the National Interagency Fire Center.

With that in mind, it seems like a good time to answer a question we’ve gotten about a half-dozen times at The Press Democrat: What’s being done to mitigate fire risk in Santa Rosa’s Howarth Park?

Howarth Park is a sprawling 138-acre park with miles of trails and other recreational activities that make it a draw for local residents and visitors. Its popularity and centrality might be part of why so many are curious about its wildfire potential.

I spoke with Paul Lowenthal, division chief fire marshal and public information officer for the Santa Rosa Fire Department, to find out. Lowenthal has over two decades of experience as a fire professional, working as a firefighter and fire inspector mostly in Santa Rosa, before landing in his current role.

“Howarth Park is probably one of the areas where we’ve done the most work recently,” he told me.

While there have been one or two small fires in recent years, the park is actually lower risk compared to, for instance, some spots on the north end of the city in the burn scar of the Tubbs Fire where there’s little canopy now and overgrowth of such invasive vegetation as scotch broom, Lowenthal said.

At Howarth, the fire department conducts weed abatement, such as removing plants or grass that pose a fire hazard, in specific areas of the park annually.

Last year, with extra funds, a crew created a fuel break — strategic thinning of dense tree cover and brush removal — along Sullivan ridge. Previously, they did work to clean up a large stretch of the park boundary from Medica Road down to Summerfield Road, an area they plan to focus on more this year.

In the past, the city has used goat grazing to reduce fire risk, which is something it’s looking to do more of in the future.

Lowenthal noted, however, that the effectiveness of these efforts is also crucially dependent on those who live around the park doing the work to keep their properties in fire-safe condition.

That’s why a big focus for Lowenthal is educating neighborhood residents on the steps they should take on their properties. That includes weed abatement and especially clearing 5 feet of non-combustible space around their homes to help prevent ignition from embers, which was a major factor in the destructiveness of recent wildfires like Tubbs and Glass.

“One of the things for residents that choose to live around open spaces or state parks or large parks is making sure that they know that they live in a wildland urban interface, and there's certain things that they should be doing, and in many cases, will actually be required to do as part of our defensible space standards that ultimately the city will actually be moving forward with,” Lowenthal told me.

The highest threat to the park is likely a neighborhood fire that could spread into it, he added.

Roberta MacIntyre, former Sonoma County fire marshal and CEO of Fire Safe Sonoma, a longtime fire safety nonprofit, agreed. She told me that the vast majority of wildland fires start in urbanized areas.

“There’s a social contract there,” MacIntyre said, “that my neighbor is not going to be a hazard to me.”

(In addition to home hardening, she emphasized the importance of being prepared and comfortable with evacuation. Fire Safe Sonoma has personal wildland fire action guide booklets on its website, www.firesafesonoma.org, for those looking for further information.)

Ready Set Go Fire Action Guide.pdf

Su Guia de Accion.pdf

The Santa Rosa Fire Department recently received three grants that it’s in the process of rolling out to reduce fire fuel along evacuation routes and road systems; to perform home assessments; and to fund vent screening and roof gutter guards for structures and homes in wildland urban interface areas.

The first phase is getting eligible residents to opt in. More details about these and other strategic efforts are available at srcity.org/3558/Wildfire-Ready.

The sporadic rains over the past several weeks are a relief, Lowenthal said.

“We started fire season much earlier last year than usual in early May,” he told me. “With the weather cooperating, that’s been pushed back, probably to early June. It doesn’t mean that we’ve dodged a bullet this season though.”

The state’s climate-change-fueled dry conditions have him worried.

“I think we’ll see fires spread more quickly this year than we typically see.”

He’s been encouraged, though, by community cooperation and efforts to mitigate fire damage, pointing to the relative lack of structure damage in the city last year despite a large amount of acreage burned.

“Not a lot of cities have been impacted or threatened by four major fires in four years, and that activity has clearly sparked an interest from our community to do their part,” Lowenthal said.

“In Your Corner” is a new column that puts watchdog reporting to work for the community. If you have a concern, a tip, or a hunch, you can reach “In Your Corner” Columnist Marisa Endicott at 707-521-5470 or marisa.endicott@pressdemocrat.com. On Twitter @InYourCornerTPD and Facebook @InYourCornerTPD.