Subscribe

California embarks on wider push to treat forests, protect communities from wildfire

The "Follow This Story" feature will notify you when any articles related to this story are posted.

When you follow a story, the next time a related article is published — it could be days, weeks or months — you'll receive an email informing you of the update.

If you no longer want to follow a story, click the "Unfollow" link on that story. There's also an "Unfollow" link in every email notification we send you.

This tool is available only to subscribers; please make sure you're logged in if you want to follow a story.

Please note: This feature is available only to subscribers; make sure you're logged in if you want to follow a story.

Subscribe

In the cool, damp days of winter, state and local fire crews are at work making Sonoma County forests more resistant to wildfires and residents a bit safer from the disasters that have tarnished life in the region over the past three years.

Cal Fire, inmate and county crews were at work Friday trimming trees and clearing brush along Mountain Home Ranch Road in the Mayacamas Mountains, a dead-end road that is a high priority for preventive brush management because it is the sole access to rural homes.

Ben Nicholls, a Cal Fire division chief based in Santa Rosa, said the work reducing wildfire hazards will continue this spring and into the future as California pours hundreds of millions of dollars into an effort to protect fire-prone communities from devastating blazes.

It’s a daunting challenge in the face of climate change, with warmer spring and summer weather, reduced snowpack and more intense dry seasons making forests increasingly susceptible to severe conflagrations, a Cal Fire report said last year.

Fire seasons are longer and decades of fire suppression “have disrupted natural fire cycles and added to the problem,” the report said, noting that as many as 15 million acres of California forests need some form of restoration. Brush management, once completed, “must be repeated over the years,” it said.

Gov. Gavin Newsom’s $37 million emergency forest treatment program included projects to reduce the wildfire risks around 200 communities statewide, including Ukiah and Willits in Mendocino County, as the first round in a campaign to address a “massive backlog” of overgrown woodlands in an era of heightened wildfire danger and more people living in harm’s way.

Newsom announced this week the completion of all but one of 35 projects targeting 90,000 acres surrounding the communities deemed by Cal Fire at high risk of wildfires that are growing fiercer and exacting a higher toll on human lives and property.

Two of the projects, the governor said, included removal of wildfire fuels that helped protect Santa Barbara residents during the wind-driven Cave fire in November. His new proposed budget provides $200 million for continued work that includes removal of dead trees, clearing brush, creating firebreaks and protecting evacuation routes.

“California isn’t just waiting around for the next fire season,” Newsom said in statement. “We are acting quickly — with emergency pace — to protect communities most at risk and save lives before the wildfire starts.”

Cal Fire’s report noted that California experienced the “deadliest and most destructive wildfires in its history” in 2017 and 2018, causing the loss of more than 100 lives, destroying nearly 23,000 structures, scorching more than 1.8 million acres and exposing millions of urban and rural residents to unhealthy air.

The 2017 North Bay wildfires alone killed 40 people and leveled more than 6,000 homes.

The 2018 Mendocino Complex fires in Lake and Mendocino counties burned more than 700  square miles, an area so large that if placed on a map of the urban Bay Area it would span from San Francisco to the outskirts of the East Bay and down the peninsula to South Bay.

John Haschak, chairman of the Mendocino County Board of Supervisors, said the Willits project last summer transformed severely overgrown woodlands into a setting “like a city park.”

Work around the edges of the Willits valley created a 720-acre fuel break, with brush, small green trees and dead or dying trees removed, and a 550-acre prescribed burn to reduce wildfire intensity and rate of spread, protecting the city’s hospital, schools and power facilities.

The project also cleared an old logging road to provide an emergency access route into Brooktrails, a community north of Willits with about 5,000 residents and only one public road in and out, Haschak said.

It was described as the first phase of a project within a nearly 12,000-acre area surrounding Willits.

The 700-acre project largely in the hills east and west of Ukiah included 90 acres of fuel breaks close to homes, 160 acres of firebreaks cut by bulldozers on ridge tops and 450 acres of prescribed burns in brushy lands loaded with dead vegetation.

It was intended to protect the county government center, the city’s hospital, airport, power lines, water and wastewater facilities, as well as nine surrounding communities and the Highway 101 corridor.

“People were very happy with it,” Haschak said, noting the county needs to consider steps to maintain the firebreaks.

The work was described as the first phase of a 26,541-acre area surrounding Ukiah.

There were no projects last year in Sonoma County under the governor’s initiative, but Cal Fire on its own has been busy reducing wildfire risks here, Nicholls said.

Two projects last year in Sonoma Valley cleared vegetation along two-thirds of a mile on Grove Street where it climbs into the hills west of Sonoma and about a mile along Norrbom Road where it rises into the hills north of town. Both roads are the only way in to rural residences, including some large estates, Nicholls said.

Cal Fire engine companies got help from state prison inmates, Schell Vista firefighters and Sonoma County public works crews on both projects.

Assemblyman Jim Wood, D-Santa Rosa, said in 2018 that California should spend $300 million a year on forest management and ultimately got an agreement for $200 million a year for five years.

The governor’s 35 priority projects were a response to an urgent need, but didn’t cover every place vulnerable to wildfires, he said this week.

As state agencies and local governments identify areas at risk, “there is money in the budget, much of that I fought for two years ago,” that can continue protecting communities from wildfires, Wood said.

“Further action is imperative,” Cal Fire’s report said.

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

Please read our commenting policy
  • No profanity, abuse, racism or hate speech
  • No personal attacks on other commenters
  • No spam or off-topic posts
  • Comments including URLs and media may be held for moderation
Send a letter to the editor

Our Network

Sonoma Index-Tribune
Petaluma Argus Courier
North Bay Business Journal
Sonoma Magazine
Bite Club Eats
La Prensa Sonoma
Emerald Report
Spirited Magazine