LAKE COUNTY — A local agricultural engineer is working with the Bureau of Land Management, Cal Fire and local fire departments in an effort to restructure the way fire prevention is done. Jared Hendricks, a Lake County native who says he grew up getting “dragged around through every little brush patch and canyon” in the Scotts Creek Watershed by his father, sees this year as a unique opportunity for implementation of the kind of ecological work he does.
“It’s time to really pressure for prevention work,” said Hendricks, citing a major shift in fire prevention strategy that he has seen on the part of Cal Fire following the recent uptick in disaster-level fires in California.
“Twenty years ago, whenever a private landowner wanted to do controlled burning he made one phone call, Cal Fire showed up with a crew—no charge—and they always made it into a training event for their young people. That was the standard for years and years.” That practice, Hendricks said, ended about 15 years ago. Now, said Hendricks, who has met extensively with Battalion Chief Greg Bertelli and others from the agency, Cal Fire plans to start sending backup crews out for private burns again. In addition, said Hendricks, more grants may be made accessible by Cal Fire to private landowners for their fuel reduction projects, including controlled burns.
Similar grants are already in progress for organizations and government groups. In May of this year, Cal Fire began soliciting applications for the 2017-2018 California Climate Investments Fire Prevention Grant Program, a funnel for some of the $195 million in funding from the state given to Cal Fire’s Forest Health and Fire Prevention Programs. Local government, tribal organizations, fire and water districts and nonprofits are some of the kinds of entities which are eligible for this grant funding. Reduction of fuel loading and vegetation clearance, as well as the removal of dead or dying trees, are representative of the work Cal Fire is looking to fund with the grant program.
Hendricks is currently working on a grant application for a Cal Fire fire prevention project. He said that the application is in the planning and design phase.
Hendricks gives presentations in Lake County and meets with local and state agencies to develop plans and find grant funding for wildfire prevention projects. In July, Hendricks met with Cal Fire officials in Benmore Valley “to look at the fire restoration situation” there. The project they took on included mastication surrounding two miles of road and creating dozer lines. When the Mendocino Complex’s River Fire hit just a week after the project was finished, those fire breaks were a benefit to the firefight. “It became an absolute critical fire line for what happened.”
“The risk levels are insane” for fire in Lake County, said Hendricks, adding that fire dynamics are consequently more dangerous than they have been in the past. Traditional fire break measures like clearing 100 feet of defensible space around a house “don’t cut it anymore,” said Hendricks. “You need to have a checkerboard of fuel reduction.”
Livestock grazing and reforestation are some of the tactics that Hendricks noted as contributors to better fire breaks. His “integrative fire ecology restoration” method includes wildlife habitat restoration, water resource optimization, vegetative revitalization, and the “establishment of eco-health sustainability” as components.
In a pamphlet written by Hendricks, he emphasizes the need not just for controlled burning, but for a variety of tactics to be used simultaneously in order to better prevent wildfires. “Truly effective fire ecology restoration, in degraded, unnatural-state wild environs, must inherently integrate a multiplicity of environmental restoration project components.” He lists “control burning, mechanical brush removal, firebreak and trail construction, and wild lands water resource development, done in combination, within fully integrative restoration project designs,” as effective practices.
Fire activity in Lake County has increased so dramatically in the last three years that Hendricks expects good changes in fire prevention tactics to come about. “It’s so hugely on the table now,” Hendricks said of the fire prevention problem. “We’ve known [fire] is coming, we have the capability to deal with it, and nothing was happening.” Hendricks noted that, in his view, “we’re having a major energy shift” in county government for support of more fire prevention projects. He mentioned Supervisors Tina Scott and Moke Simon, as well as District 3 Supervisor-elect EJ Crandall as supporters.
With all that is going on these days, Hendricks thought that “the timing is right” for fire prevention changes.
