Fire prevention efforts in full flight across Sonoma County and wider region

The center is due to issue an update Sunday, the first day of California’s Wildfire Preparedness Week.

And so firefighters, officials at all levels of government, utility companies and people trying to exist in the wildland-urban interface are gearing up for what may lie ahead.

For Cal Fire, that largely means prescribed burns this time of year. The Sonoma-Lake-Napa unit (which also serves Solano, Yolo and Colusa counties) is currently permitted for six controlled burns totaling 2,243 acres, including sites near the Jenner Headlands, Healdsburg, Pepperwood Preserve and Lake Sonoma.

Executing the burns can be tricky, though. Cal Fire needs available engines and agreeable weather to make it happen. Knecht called the latter “very much a ‘Goldilocks,’ just-right situation,” which is why Cal Fire tends to set these blazes in mid-spring or late fall.

But Sonoma-Napa-Lake initiated its seasonal staffing increases about a month and a half ahead of schedule this year, hiring 154 firefighters on April 11. The unit will add another 60 firefighters to open all its stations and the Sonoma Air Attack Base on May 16, and an additional 50 to fully staff its engines on May 30. It also received funding for a hand crew that will be stationed at Los Guilicos, near the Oakmont retirement community, as soon as improvements are made to the buildings there.

The local Cal Fire unit has tripled its number of defensible space inspectors, too. They tutor people on things like creating adequate clearance around structures, making those buildings more resistant to ignition, preparing go bags with emergency supplies and identifying safe evacuation routes.

“We can’t put an engine in every driveway when the Tubbs fire kicks off,” Knecht said. “People have to help firefighters out and make their own homes resistant to fire. So we can fight the actual wildfire rather than focusing only on houses that are on fire.”

Where the state doesn’t have jurisdiction, entities like Sonoma County are doing similar assessments. Residents here can call the Sonoma County Fire District’s main business line and schedule an inspection. It’s not an enforcement tool, but rather a free educational program, Heine said.

Meanwhile, Sonoma County is on the verge of completing its core emergency infrastructure, said Chris Godley, the county’s director of emergency management. It opened an alert and warning annex last year, and the Board of Supervisors is expected to approve a care and shelter annex at its May 10 meeting.

As Godley spoke over the phone, he said he could see a dry erase board in his office that he uses for priority checklists. Right now, the easel is devoted to fire prevention.

The supervisors also recently authorized $3.8 million for fire management projects like creating buffers along ridgelines and clearing overgrown brush along roads.

That money came from PG&E, through a settlement for its role in the devastating 2017 wildfires; the utility’s total payout to the county and the city of Santa Rosa for those incidents was more than $240 million. More recently, PG&E agreed to pay $55 million to avoid criminal prosecution for the Kincade fire in 2019 and the Dixie fire in 2021.

It’s safe to say that outside of fire departments, no organization is more responsible for fire safety — or more haunted by its failures to ensure it — than PG&E.

The ground-and-air inspections remain an important tool for the company.

PG&E conducts the line checks annually, looking for dead or declining trees that could potentially fall on the hot wires. The air reconnaissance is especially valuable for stretches identified as high-risk by Cal Fire, and for larger areas with sparse trees, said Olney, the Davey Tree arborist.

“Fort Ross would take a month or more to hike every line,” he said. “We can do it in a couple days.”

There were plenty of dubious trees to be seen from the helicopter Wednesday, not surprising in a region heavily impacted by bark beetles and sudden oak death. All in all, though, the situation was favorable.

“Everything’s looking green,” Price said to Olney at one point.

“That’s what we like,” he replied.

Heine preaches more than doom, too. His fire district is obsessed with hardening defenses, and with getting residents to understand the huge role they can play in the process. But he wouldn’t be spending so much time on this if he didn’t think it could make a real difference in the next middle-of-the-night emergency.

“We all live in a state of fear, particularly on hot, windy days in Sonoma County,” Heine said. “I want people to know we can’t predict where the fires will occur. But we are well prepared when they do occur.”

You can reach Phil Barber at 707-521-5263 or phil.barber@pressdemocrat.com. On Twitter @Skinny_Post.