Poor federal oversight during October fire cleanup caused damage to many North Bay properties, official says

California’s top emergency services official has lambasted the federal government’s handling of the October wildfire cleanup, saying poor oversight allowed contractors to cause unnecessary damage to many burned properties in the North Bay.

Mark Ghilarducci, director of the state Office of Emergency Services, sent a sharply-worded letter to the Army Corps of Engineers last week highlighting a range of issues he said were caused by federal contractors.

Problems identified by Ghilarducci’s office include “obvious over-scraping” of properties, damaged driveways and sidewalks, damaged wells and septic tanks and even lingering contaminated ash and fire debris in more than a dozen instances, he said.

The corps oversaw the $1.3 billion government-sponsored cleanup program, which removed 2.2 million tons of debris in Sonoma, Napa, Mendocino and Lake counties.

The cleanup was declared completed in June, but hundreds of fire survivors still had issues with the way their properties were cleared. And Sonoma County leaders have struggled to get to the bottom of the lingering complaints in recent months.

Federal subcontractors in some cases didn’t follow basic measures such as putting protective material over a driveway, a misstep that likely constitutes a breach of contract between the corps and its contractors, Ghilarducci said. Contractors also took “far more soil than was necessary” from hundreds of properties, he said in the letter, which was first reported by KQED.

“Given these subcontractors were paid per ton of soil removed, it is probable this over-excavation was an intentional effort to capitalize on this tragedy by defrauding the government,” Ghilarducci wrote. “(The corps) allowed this to occur.”

Army Corps spokesperson Mike Petersen defended the debris removal, saying some amount of “incidental damage” was an unfortunate but unavoidable consequence of such a massive cleanup effort.

“Inherent in this work is the use of heavy equipment ... going over suburban roads not meant to carry the weight of 40-ton excavators that are clearing fire debris,” he said. “It’s a huge mission and we’re proud of the work our folks did.”

Corps officials are reviewing Ghilarducci’s letter and will respond soon, Petersen said.

The letter was dated Wednesday, one day after Ghilarducci met with officials from Sonoma County and Santa Rosa, as well as representatives of the North Bay state legislative delegation and the offices of Congressmen Mike Thompson and Jared Huffman to discuss the debris removal problems.

County supervisors and staff members have been particularly vocal about the cleanup issues. They’ve pressed for more details about why some complaints were rejected and called on Ghilarducci’s office to do more to resolve the matter.

“This letter is just awesome, because this is exactly what we were talking about, that these fire survivors were victimized because of the negligence in the hiring of these contractors by the Corps of Engineers,” said Supervisor Shirlee Zane, who went to Sacramento for the meeting with Ghilarducci last week. “I couldn’t be more overjoyed that this letter was sent.”

More than 600 burned properties in Sonoma County filed complaints about over-excavation, of which 283 were deemed eligible for the state’s backfill program and 318 have been declared ineligible, according to deputy county administrator Michael Gossman, who runs the Office of Recovery and Resiliency. A handful are still being reviewed, he said.

The county has been trying to get more information about the rejected complaints, hoping to narrow the list or at least give fire survivors more insight about why Ghilarducci’s office can’t help them. But in his letter to the corps, Ghilarducci said his office was “unable to properly evaluate” many cleanup complaints it received because the corps “refused” to provide crucial information about the cleanup of individual properties.

The corps has “finally agreed” to hand over that documentation, according to Ghilarducci.

Petersen pushed back on the letter’s characterization of communication issues, saying state emergency officials “were our partners” and it was inaccurate to leave the “impression that the corps wasn’t picking up the phone.”

State Sen. Mike McGuire, D-Healdsburg, said he and other legislators representing the North Bay hope to release a plan in the coming weeks that will address “some of the most egregious examples” of over-excavation damage. McGuire said he supported Ghilarducci’s letter exerting pressure on the Army Corps.

“There are some contractors that committed potentially fraudulent acts, and it’s the Army Corps’ responsibility to remedy the challenges that were advanced by their contractors,” he said. “Fire survivors have suffered enough. They shouldn’t have to suffer again.”