‘Part of history’: Cal Fire crew settles into first year-round Sonoma County fire camp since the ’90s

Gerrit Swam’s room at the base of Mount Hood contains a Pablo Picasso poster, a peacock feather, twinkly lights and his favorite item — a yoga mat.

Swam, 21, is one of about 40 Cal Fire members who now occupy space at the county’s Los Guilicos campus off Highway 12 east of Oakmont, home to the first year-round fire camp in Sonoma County since the Black Mountain Conservation Camp in Cazadero closed in 1992.

The crew’s goal is to improve response time in the especially fire-prone area of east Santa Rosa, which was heavily burned by the 2020 Glass Fire, as well as to provide year-round fuel reduction work, critical to cut the risk of catastrophic wildfires.

“This is huge,” Cal Fire Division Chief Ben Nichols said. “It’s super exciting for us because not only does it help with day-to-day fires here in the county, but it's that critical pre-fire work that has to happen.”

The Hood Mountain crew, which moved into the facility three weeks ago, focuses primarily on using chain saws and hand tools to construct fire lines during a wildfire. Hand crews usually consist of 14 firefighters, one captain and a fire engineer.

When they are not responding to fires, they are creating shaded fuel breaks in the nearby hills and on the Sonoma-Napa county line off Trinity Road. Shaded fuel breaks allow some trees to remain so they can provide shade and prevent grasses and vegetation below from drying out.

The hand crew has also been tasked with getting the facility up and running.

In early February, the Board of Supervisors granted Cal Fire a three-year lease at the Los Guilicos campus. Although there is no cost for leasing the property, Cal Fire pays for utilities and covers the cost of retrofitting the buildings to meet current codes, which was expected to cost $47,000.

Retrofitting has included replacing the sprinklers, repainting, fixing up the kitchen and making the place feel less like a prison and more like a home, said Erick Hernandez, a Cal Fire spokesperson on a Thursday tour of the facility.

“It is a lot of work,” Swam said. “It’s a fixer-upper for sure. But I’m just trying to leave it better than I found it.”

Though the inside of the Los Guilicos camp still looks like the juvenile detention facility it once was, with rows of cells filled with bunk beds and secure metal doors, the bars and padlocks are gone and each room is decorated to each crew member’s liking.

On one wall hangs a white board with a semiserious to-do list, including items like “Wash Liam’s mouth w/soap,” “Have a talent show” and “Call loved ones.”

“Go to a fire before 2023” is marked with a check.

However, “Get rid of Lavin’s Ghost” is not yet checked off.

“At first we thought this place was gonna be haunted,” Swam said. And though they haven’t done any ghost-busting yet, “it's a nice shell that we can grow into.”

Being part of the first live-in hand crew in decades is “being part of history,” said Edgar Alvarez, 24, who just left to be an engineer for Cal Fire. “We get to set the standards for the next generation that comes through.”

The crew “is like a family,” Alvarez said. Most of the Hood Mountain crew was fighting the Siskiyou County wildfires Thursday morning during a public showing of the facility.

For many of them, the work may seem strenuous, but the most difficult work is the most rewarding, Alvarez and Swam said.

“I have a lot of callings to the forest,” Swam said. “I'm protecting that and to protect the life and property of these local citizens ― that's definitely what I want to be doing.”

You can reach Staff Writer Alana Minkler at 707-526-8511 or alana.minkler@pressdemocrat.com. On Twitter @alana_minkler.