The initial fuels reduction work Mr. Zandona refers to in his January 29 letter is part of the Santa Barbara Mountain Communities Defense Zone, a Community Wildfire Protection Plan project supported by the Santa Barbara Fire Safe Council and the Santa Barbara County Fire Department. Public scoping on this project was completed in 2017, and work began last year after funding was secured. The contract for the initial work on West Camino Cielo was awarded to Summit Forestry based in Oregon.
The purpose of this project is to reduce the intensity of fire behavior so that future wildfires in this area will burn with less intensity as these fuel breaks will provide firefighters with improved opportunities for tactical operations. As outlined in the project proposal, up to 95 percent of the existing woody vegetation will be treated within each fuel break to produce a younger seral stage of shrubs interspersed with a mixture of bare ground, grasses, and forbs. Mechanical treatments will include the use of heavy equipment such as masticators, and the treated vegetation will be left as ground cover or piled and burned under favorable weather conditions.
We regret that some residents were not advised that this project was moving from planning to implementation and invite all members of the community interested in learning more about this work to attend a public meeting at Los Padres’ San Marcos fire station February 22 at 6 p.m. This meeting was originally scheduled for February 1 and was scrubbed in the interest of safety based on potentially heavy rainfall Thursday evening.
