Fountaingrove brush management hints at Santa Rosa’s broader path to reduce fire risk

Chainsaws buzzed on the steep slope west of Rocky Point Way on Monday morning as crews hired by the Open Space Management Association in Fountaingrove chopped up brush and small trees into small piles for chipping.

Strolling above were the association’s current president, Bruce McConnell, and past president, Dennis Searles. Their minds were occupied by the 2017 Tubbs fire and the prospect of future wildfires in the area.

Searles pointed out cigarette butts on the street and in the grass that could have posed fire hazards. McConnell described how the association spent about $250,000 each year on brush management — hacking back fuel in the undeveloped land of this upscale subdivision in north Santa Rosa.

The goal was to clear ground up to 100 feet from homes.

“We’ve done our part,” McConnell said, “and hopefully next time, we’ll get suppression.”

This kind of vegetation work is seen as critical three years after the Tubbs fire hit Santa Rosa, where the City Council in August passed a community wildfire protection plan to guide similar fire prevention work in the years to come.

Nearly half of the roughly 3,000 Santa Rosa homes destroyed by flames in 2017 have been rebuilt. About 450 homes are complete in Fountaingrove, where more than 1,600 homes where lost, while almost 1,000 are finished in Coffey Park, where about 1,400 homes were destroyed, according to city data. An additional 412 homes are under construction in Fountaingrove, and 251 are underway in Coffey Park.

With hundreds more homes in some stage stage of planning, only about 500 lots still sit idle citywide. Most are in Fountaingrove, and about half of the 500 have the same owners as before the Tubbs fire, said Jesse Oswald, the city’s chief building official. He noted that city staff are still unsure whether a final rush will precede the winding down of the city’s rebuild-centric permit operations early next year.

“It’s really a crystal ball-exercise for us,” he said.

Each passing year since the Tubbs fire has brought new infernos. The deadly Camp fire in Butte County and sprawling Mendocino Complex fires blanketed the region with smoke in 2018. The Kincade fire in 2019 menaced Santa Rosa from the north, eating into the Tubbs burn scar. And while last month’s Walbridge fire, part of a massive complex of wildfires sparked across California by lightning strikes, never threatened the city, the blaze was near and fierce enough to spur new concerns among fire-wary Santa Rosans.

In Fountaingrove, where two catastrophic blazes have burned in the space of about a half century, the Open Space Management Association has for more than a decade had its own wildfire protection plan, guiding actions to reduce fire risk on 200 undeveloped acres and the wider subdivision.

“We put out this plan, and we followed it,” said Searles, who served on the city’s steering committee for as the plan was completed over the past few years. Since 2009, the association has expanded on 17 acres of fuel breaks initially created by developers. Now about 115 acres are managed as fuel breaks, he said.

The association plans more work to clear drainages and hillsides going forward in hopes of preventing future blazes, or at least limiting their intensity.

But vegetation is constantly growing back in the area, and the open space work was powerless to stop flames that destroyed roughly 80% of Fountaingrove homes in 2017.

“There’s a sense that once it burns, it won’t burn again for years,” said Assistant Fire Marshal Paul Lowenthal. “But there is still a very significant threat and risk to our city.”

Santa Rosa is following in Fountaingrove’s footsteps with a wildfire protection plan of its own. The recently completed document is expected to bolster the city’s bids for grant funding, Lowenthal said. He recently wrapped up an application for a federal grant to clear vegetation along evacuation routes.

Some of the routes that could stand to benefit are in Fountaingrove or frame its edges, including stretches of Fountaingrove Parkway, Chanate Road and Cross Creek Road.

But there’s plenty of competition for fire safety grants, and having a plan in place is no guarantee of an award. McConnell and Searles both said they didn’t believe the Fountaingrove fire protection plan directly contributed to any single grant the association received in the past decade.

Still, the brush clearance work must go on. Reducing the amount of fuel is key to limiting the intensity of wildfires, Searles said, noting that Native Americans were known to regularly set fires to improve hunting and forage opportunities. As prevention became the norm over the past two centuries, a large backlog of unburned fuels built up.

Searles suggested the city allow pile burning as another tool to reduce excess vegetation that could fuel future wildfires.

No such burning is allowed in Santa Rosa, but city fire officials are working on an ordinance to take before the City Council that would allow burn piles under certain circumstances, depending on the size of the parcel and its proximity to the city’s wildland borders, Lowenthal said.

The city’s new plan points to the hills above the Skyhawk, Montecito and Rincon Valley areas as the zones of highest current wildfire risk — land between the burn scars of the Tubbs and Nuns fires.

Lowenthal urged residents not to be complacent and to be mindful not just of hardening their homes but the surrounding landscapes.

But even the best laid and executed plans would be hard-pressed to stop another fast-moving, wind-driven blaze like the Tubbs fire, Searles acknowledged.

"The fire just became so intense,“ he said. ”There were so many embers coming ― it wasn’t a normal occurrence.“

You can reach Staff Writer Will Schmitt at 707-521-5207 or will.schmitt@pressdemocrat.com. On Twitter @wsreports.