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Cal Fire Butte Unit burned a grass unit between Chico and Oroville today, and the Butte Cal-TREX is hoping to burn about 130 acres of grass in the same area around 10/19.
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We just published Will Harling’s keynote address from last week’s California Forest Science Symposium.
Will Harling discussed the restoration of fire ecology in the Klamath Basin through cultural burning and prescribed fire. He highlighted the success of the Western Klamath Restoration Partnership, which brought together diverse stakeholders to manage fire at the landscape scale. Harling emphasized the importance of shared values, such as sustainable economies and cultural vitality, in achieving collaboration. He shared examples of effective burn projects, including the Somes Bar and Orleans Valley initiatives, and the impact of fire exclusion on salmon populations. Harling also addressed the challenges of fire management, including smoke management and firefighter safety, and called for continued political will and community support to restore fire to the landscape.
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We’re in a good burn window for pine and oak litter here in Butte County.
The Butte Fire Safe Council will be conducting their largest underburn to date on Friday in Magalia. Terra Fuego Resource Foundation will be providing the horsepower.
Here is a 9-acre Butte PBA/Chico State burn from yesterday. California State Parks also provided a squad - it was the first time I’ve burned with them here.
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We’re still in a good burn window here in Butte County. Burned about 10 acres of grass and weeds on Doe Mill Ridge today with the Butte PBA, and it was still a little too green for the star thistle and bigger weeds. Temps maxed out in mid 80s, but RH was a little too high when we started, around 60%… Later in the day, the star thistle burned better when RH was closer to 40%. Had to start earlier because max temp in the prescription was 85 degrees. Lesson learned? Maybe spec a higher max temp, as our RH stayed high enough that we weren’t going to have spotting problems.
Seems like we may still a week or two out from optimal star thistle burns above 1,000-1,500’ elevation.
Chico FD, Chico State Ecological Reserves, CCC, and Butte PBA burned about 100 acres of grass in Bidwell Park on Thursday. This is an area we have burned 4 out of the past 5 years. Originally the burns were to reduce star thistle, but now the thistle is pretty minimal, and the FD is mainly doing it to create a buffer between the wildlands and City of Chico.
Last week the FD burned about 150 acres at the Chico Airport with 5 firefighters before lunch.
The Butte PBA has gotten a lot of good fire on the ground this season. Today’s burn had squad leadership from a pair of volunteers who have gotten all of their fire experience thru the group.
The Prescribed Burn Association here is funded by a Cal Fire grant, as are many of the grassroots burning endeavors taking off around the state.
Here’s a link to the May PBA Newsletter. Butte PBA's First Ever Story Maps!!🥰
If you’re interested in getting involved with landowner burning, there are some good resources at CalPBA.org.
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Kern County is currently burning along highway 58 near bealville, this is similar to the highway 41 project and others across the state.
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There is a CARX California State-Certified Prescribed Burn Boss class coming up in Chico in November. Contact Lenya at the email on this flyer if you meet the prerequisites and are interested in attending. Quite a few active USFS and other Agency people have taken this class to prepare for consulting work after retirement or to help out with their local burning groups. Getting certified as a CARX also brings some legal protections for people who want to write burn plans, and provides access to the State’s prescribed fire claims fund coverage for landowner burns.
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Pictures are worth a thousand words when it comes to the effects of fires, treatments & manipulating fuels. TNC providing a good infographic here & one picture says a lot imo.
The Terra Fuego Resource Foundation (working for Butte County Firesafe Council) burned 170 acres of live oak woodland, brush, mastication, and grass over past two days just east of Oroville. This is the Council’s largest burn, to date, and their first major burn in the brush.
We had a 20-person Firestorm crew, Type III engine, 3 Type VI engines, and 3 FyreBx skid steers. Duane Fields and Jim Wills were burn bosses and Bill Jacks ran firing ops. Cal Fire was burning nearby at Loafer Creek SP, and we shared contingency resources with their burns, and they also did traffic control while we burned along Forbestown Road.
Grass thatch burned well, even at 75% humidity, today, and we got some decent crown runs in the live oak thickets where they were aligned with winds. But a lot of the thick live oak and brush just underburned. Much of the unit was thinned with a masticator in May, and that stuff burned like the sun. Heavies burned completely down in many places.
The FyreBx machines are a killer piece of equipment for these projects. They’re a 300-500 gallon tank that mounts on the front of a heavy skid steer, with a pump the runs off the machine’s hydraulics. They can push line, pre-treat, and have a smooth-bore nozzle that reaches up to put out torching trees. FyreBx owner Sean Henry was out with us yesterday, with a 500-gallon model. (They’re sponsoring my YouTube channel, but I’d rave about them, anyway).
We could have used more wind. Yesterday was really stagnant, and Air Quality shut us down at about 75 acres. Today had better circulation, and we got fire on 95 acres, but we still kind of sat in our own smoke a lot, and AQ put the kabosh on a separate 22 acre grass unit toward the end of the afternoon.
Good things are happening in Butte County with rx fire. Between private landowners, Cal Fire, the Forest Service, Chico State Reserves, and privateers like Terra Fuego, we’ll likely be over 1,000 acres of burning this month.
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Can you explain a little more? Was this a layer of chips on the ground that was burning and how thick? Over here in GV that stuff would be near sopping wet right now.
There was a thick layer of shredded brush and oak in large patches across the unit. These are basically large piles of kindling, in full sun. We haven’t had very much precip in the lower elevations, and the mastication burned intensely, and with a long residence time. The type of mower/grinder head on this particular job left things in long shards, not so much as smaller chips.
I’ll have some drone video of the fire effects posted on The Lookout in next couple weeks.
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Abridged version
Goal: Quickly increase the amount of beneficial fire (prescribed burns) used to prevent destructive mega-wildfires.
Key Actions (The Red Tape Cut):
Fast-Track Permitting: It directs state agencies to speed up the process of getting permits for controlled burns.
Air Quality Flexibility: It makes changes to how air quality concerns are managed to make it easier to conduct burns when weather windows are open, while still protecting public health.
Local Support: It removes policies that block local governments, volunteer fire departments, and conservation groups from participating in and being protected by the state’s prescribed fire programs.
In short: The order cuts administrative red tape and relaxes certain environmental/regulatory hurdles to let fire professionals use controlled burns as a major tool to clear brush and prevent massive, uncontrolled wildfires.
If you were actually looking for Executive Order N-35-20, it was a COVID-19 order focused on temporarily cutting red tape for healthcare, essential deliveries, and public meeting procedures
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Did Prescribed Fire save Sisters, Oregon from 2017 Mill Fire
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New video on a small landowner burn put on by the Butte PBA last week in Forest Ranch.
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