The aftermath beyond the destruction.

California & Hawaii Hotlist Questions and Discussion
#141

We recently worked on a fuels management plan for a small city on the Central Coast that spent over $200k on a vegetation management plan and CEQA to treat the vegetation on the margin of their city where it backs up to vacant lands along a river. We asked who owned the land and if we could get his number. The City said ‘Oh, it’s complicated - the guy is a character, we had issues with him for code enforcement issues, and we only deal with him through a third party’.

About $150k into the planning process (lizard surveys, arch surveys, rare plant surveys, public meetings, LiDAR mapping, etc) I just Googled the owner and gave him a call. I asked him if he was OK with his neighbors weed-eating or mowing on his land adjacent to their houses. He said ‘hell, I don’t care. If they have a dozer, they can scrape it!’

I think this is part of our larger problem with wildfire. It’s almost impossible to get (very simple) things done thru the bureaucratic channels. Electric chainsaws are quiet, weed eaters are light, and there’s not much traffic early on a Sunday morning, just saying.

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#142

The guy on here who posted about Fed land where they won’t do anything and won’t let anybody else do anything either. I have heard that same story a number of times. But unlike an absentee landowner, or state/county, they have the resources and the will to harm anybody who dares transgress and clear their weeds and brush, or grade their potholed road.

If they won’t take care of it, they need to sell it.

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#143

My brother and I have property that bumps up against a dilapidated orchard. To get permission to go onto the property to clear brush farther back from our property line, we would have to sign waivers of liability. I’m sure if I got injured enough to require medical attention, my medical insurance company would sue them in an effort to recover their loss. The company that owns the property hires someone to do the minimum work to meet the legal requirements of clearance, but that is not enough. The orchard has already burned a couple of times in the last two decades, but the fuel load has still grown back, with tall grass and berry vines in with the broken trees.

And right there is a big part of your uphill battle in vegetation management: That stuff grows back.

On another side, I saw a news story about a program in Napa County about where CF would make a chipper available to property owners, and I think it was at no additional cost to the property owner, thereby helping property owners clear the brush around their homes. One property owner interviewed complained that he should get paid, or a tax break, for clearing the brush around his property, using a chipper that is already provided at no additional cost to him. I’ll just leave that there, I’ve been trying to cut down on my use of objectionable language.

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#144

That is another major problem in all this, the assumption that a majority of people understand how things work, or how fire behaves. I remember years ago a local letter to the editor, a lady was complaining that she had to clear the brush behind her house because without it a fire would just race up to the back of the house, the brush would slow down the fire.

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#145
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#146

So for discussion sake, if the media is going to cite the termination of the LAFD Chief it’s because there was inadequate staffing or translated, was not a staffing pattern in place to hold personnel, The chief was terminated ultimately because of this…

LA Times Article,delayed staffing, inadequate road sustems

So a little bit of comparison for discussion of knee jerk potential and effects in the wake of.

In the years past Federal Incident Commanders started to carry personal liability insurance as department backing was not always absolute. Seeing that the Chiefs termination is being blamed as this being one of the factors could we see:

Direction or change in forest augmented staffing for increased indices for more of a liability or self-preservation maneuver, more so than what has been past practice or the right thing?

Increase staffing patterns for fear of being held personally responsible in the realm of “what if” for fire or incident potential?

I feel these are valid questions as the wake and result a finger pointing always ends up as someone’s fault. And again it has to be someone’s fault in government not property owners selection of location to live, decorative vegetation, or inadequate pre-planning for departure.

And to couple with the governor’s request for nearly 40 billion dollars … 350 million of that is to go to USFS and NWCG for repairs and “preventative” measures. 14 page request for $40 billion

It’s almost laughable that the last line item on the list seems to be the usual lineup… The least amount and the last thing to try and prevent it from happening again.

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#147

There always has to be a goat and that surely will not be the career political machine elected mayor.
This is ultimately a circular firing squad between these players and truly sad for the public, who as stated needs to bear a portion of the blame but will be lost in this fog of political war

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#148

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https://www.fastcompany.com/91284828/la-widlfires-rebuild-low-income-residents

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#149
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#150

None of those properties have to pay full value taxes while they are destroyed…let that one sink in…what is the loss in revenue for these cities if they dont have a separate fire assessment fee.

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#151

Answer
Budget breaking, potential Bankruptcy that will make Vallejo, Stockton, and San Bernardino California seem like child’s play.

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#152

@Ehoss84 - nobody likes inspections, B2, LE38s (dating myself) yada yada basically engine company inspection type stuff but when I was young I was out doing are thing and one of my COs said look I hate this stuff to but I am gonna frame this is two ways that should motivate you.

  1. From a safety side (B2) if your family worked here or shopped here and fire broke out you would want to ensure their safety right? Of course the answer is yes.

  2. You like your paycheck right? Highlighting this business burns we got a couple issues. The lost of taxable revenue from the sales biz side and if its a total loss and takes a while to rebuild they will reevaluate the property and the prop tax goes down.

I was like yup both of those are real issues so it motivated me hate them less.

So we dont do defensible space inspections at my current dept. we have prevention do that but we do have a FireSafe Council, CWPP and have been messaging hard after these fires but its still all in the hands of that private property owner to do the meaningful work of home hardening.

If you know SimTable then you know Steve Guerin and he was like what about an add campaign “dont be that house” you know the one that didnt heed the warning and then burned the whole neighborhood down.

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#153
#154

I mean night be knee jerk but I agree at face value.

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#155

Horrible Idea
This is a bitter pill bill because Rick Caruso hired PVT water tenders to protect his properties.

Over 500 PVT WT were hired by CALFIRE, FEMA, FEDS, OES in support of this disaster. Which in turned were used to support the fire suppression efforts.

These fires, govt in general needs the private sector in times like these.

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#156

Not saying that I agree or disagree with this bill, but I highly doubt that it would prevent privately owned resources from using public fire hydrants if they have a legitimate contract with a government agency. I imagine it will only target folks who are contracted directly with private property owners/insurance companies.

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#157

I don’t know that private fire responders (outside the contracting system) were much of a drain on the water systems during the recent fires. I was in touch with some work comrades that were there on private details and they were all very aware of the optics of tapping hydrants, and were generally setting up their own supply systems using swimming pools. Also, they mainly arrived once the fires were done with their initial runs. This is just class-baiting. And the unions have always had a big hardon for bashing the private contractors.

“They don’t train to the same standards,” said California Professional Firefighters Union President Brian Rice. “They’re not equipped like we are. They’re not professionals like we are.”

This is total bullsh!t. All of the guys I know who were sent down to SoCal on private assignments were NWCG-qualified engine bosses with an average of 20 years of experience. Most of them are instructors who have trained literally thousands of seasonal wildland firefighters. They were operating Type III and Type VI engines that meet all VIPR contracting standards.

If Brian Rice really wants to do his job right, he should be trying to get union protections for all of the people busting their asses for private companies. They’re professional firefighters, too, but they lack most of the protections enjoyed by their publicly-employed brothers and sisters.

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#158

But does it apply if they are hired to do work under government contract? I would think this would apply only to those who were never ordered by the team nor dispatched in any manner just privately paid for, so called fire protection folks that are staying to protect homes with no coordination and cooperation with actual fire protection agencies.

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#159

This kind of defense of this resource cannot be applied to every one of them that may pop up as a result of people hiring this sort of fail safe. The danger I feel is more in other things that these folks may do other than tap a water source.

For instance they may decide to conduct a firing operation in order to defend the property they were paid to protect. Or perhaps they’re vehicles may get stuck and block access to communities or they may unknowingly block access to communities or infrastructure.

I think you’re assuming the best because you know a group that is doing good under similar circumstances. These recent events will undoubtedly increase the market for this which will undoubtedly decrease the quality of each individual resource as the pool gets larger.

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#160

The private/insurance company firefighting response has been going on during Western wildfires for over 20 years, and the fire service as we know it has roots in similar arrangements from hundreds of years ago. There have been isolated incidents of things like the firing operation you talk about happening, but most of the people who are staffing these assignments are experienced contract FFs or retired public firefighters. We’ve talked about it at length elsewhere on this forum. One thing that has changed a bit is that many of the private resources on these fires are now working directly for individuals or brokers, not for insurance companies.

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