Photo by Ray Ford
Thursday, January 1, 2009
Predictably, after each of our big wildfires, the critics have been out in full force demanding that something be done about that damned brush. As long ago as the 1955 Refugio Fire, which burned more than 80,000 acres, one Santa Barbaran noted that “if we allowed our weeds and old papers to accumulate year after year, all around the house and the yard and the garage — if we were foolish enough to do that we’d have a hellofa blaze on our hands and we’d have [no one to blame but ourselves] once things did catch fire.”
Last year the County Fish and Wildlife Commission recommended what others have been demanding for years — that we begin removing chaparral from the hillsides to reduce the fire danger to our local communities. Recently, former County Battalion Chief Dave Bianchi argued in a News-Press editorial for the creation of a 200- to 300-foot buffer between the wildland fuels and foothill homes as a means of protecting them from the next big fire.
Shifting the Focus: Though well intentioned, focusing attention on managing the chaparral at the expense of making real changes on the urban side of the wildland urban interface (WUI) is not only an expensive proposition, but it has the potential to replace the chaparral with more weedy and flammable materials that have the potential to burn throughout the year.
Many thanks to Robert Muller, director of research at the Santa Barbara Botanic Garden, for pointing out the common misconceptions in his recent opinion piece in The Independent "The Chaparral Is Not Our Enemy". Muller notes “evidence that too-frequent burning leads to massive conversion of landscapes from chaparral to a landscape infested with weeds, which are also known to burn with intensity.” Muller presents as evidence areas such as San Diego where the hills “have lost their ability to regenerate native species and now are dominated by invasive annual weeds.”
Focusing on the chaparral ignores a more important reality: In the areas immediately behind Santa Barbara, the catastrophic wildfires of the past half century (Coyote, 1964; Romero, 1971; Sycamore, 1977; Tea Fire, 2008) didn’t start in the chaparral. Though each had a different cause, all of these fires had one thing in common: They began within the urban interface (faulty car muffler, kite, arson, carelessness).
Randy Campbell
Tea Fire, 2008: Upper Conejo and Camino Alto
The goal of a sensible fire management policy is to recognize that our biggest challenge isn’t in reducing fire danger in the mountain chaparral — it is in reducing the ability of fire to spread downhill through the urban interface, and in increasing the ability of homes to withstand the flames and coals when it does.
A Public Conversation: In another recent editorial, members of the Santa Barbara City Firefighters Alliance, including Ann Marx, Tony Pighetti, and Jon Turner, have called for a “public conversation” to discuss “how we protect our existing community from future wildfire disasters, and implement proven actions that firefighters know can protect our community.”
One of the first questions that Tea Fire victims would like answered is, “How could it have spread so fast and so far?”
When homeowner Jerry Siegel spotted the first flames burning above Westmont College at 5:45 p.m., he wasn’t too worried. “It seemed so small and far away that I didn’t think much about it,” he remembered. “My wife even wanted to take the dogs out for a walk.” Instead they decided to stay home and keep track of the fire.
Just above on Camino Verde, another homeowner by the name of Dagmar was looking out of her windows toward the mountains and watching the fire come closer and closer. Just that day she had had 12 pieces of antique furniture delivered to the house and she couldn’t believe her eyes. “I was in a complete state of denial,” she says. “I didn’t want to think it could reach my house.”
A few minutes after 7 p.m. both homeowners realized they couldn’t stay any longer.
“As I backed out of the driveway, I could see the eucalyptus tree at my neighbor’s house beginning to catch on fire,” Siegel told me. Both of these homeowners lost everything. “About all I have left is in the back seat of my car,” Siegel lamented.
Discussions that focus on managing the chaparral on the upper edges of the WUI miss a critical point: The key question is not only how we deal with the vegetation above Mountain Drive, but also the fuel below it. No doubt the 40- to 50-mph winds pushed the fire hard, but it reached Siegel’s home at 638 Las Alturas because there was plenty of fuel to move it along.
Simply put, community efforts to force homeowners to make their houses and property more fire resistant were inadequate, and almost no effort was made to reduce the total amount of fuel within the urban interface.
A Far More Radical Idea: Perhaps it is time for public officials to consider a far more radical concept: reductions in fuel loading within the wildland urban interface that will inhibit or stop the spread of wildfire so that homes can withstand its impact, and more homeowners can safely stay and defend them.
But reducing the fuel loading is not an easy issue to deal with: It involves private property rights, land use decisions, and ultimately, a community-wide focus.
Thus far, much of the approach to fire protection has been incremental and individual. While fire codes have become much stricter, often they don’t apply to older homes until a city or county permit application is made and conditions are attached for approval. When it comes to vegetation clearance, individual homeowners are required to maintain 100 feet of open space, but neighborhoods themselves have no such requirement.
Some fire experts have suggested that a “community planning model,” much like what the Mission Canyon Association is developing, is needed, but with teeth. By analyzing fuel loading within the community, the level of fire resistance of every home, topography, weather patterns, and other factors, decisions relating to the amount and type of vegetation, fire resistant practices, educational programs, and the like could be built into the community plan.
There are tough questions to be asked. Are homeowners willing to do what is necessary to make their homes more fire safe? Will they alter their vegetation preferences for the safety of their surrounding neighborhood? Are Santa Barbara City Council members and County Board of Supervisors ready to get tough about the land use decisions required to build truly fire safe communities?
Let the conversation begin.