Yeah there’s no teeth to the PRC. The penalty is much to low for the DA to even pursue it in court. It’s much more effective to work with LG to create codes or ordinances allowing administrative “fees” for violators, rather than criminal citations. Most, if not all, of the contract counties have been doing this for years. CZU added this in Santa Cruz county a couple years ago.
Dont know about CZU, but for other counties, the compliance got much better.
Yep…better yet T cards and 101 cards
A good dispatcher could run a large fire with multiple request via cards
Inspections and education are great when they are done properly, theres also quite a bit of pencil whipping out there and areas not being finished
(bit of a discussion here between me and a local inspector about my families property not being inspected for at least a few years.)
I question why if it’s been around for decades, why does hardly anyone know about even the concept, much less the details. Only in the past couple of years have I heard CF personnel even mention it, much less explain what it is or how important it is. I’ve been emailing journalists for years now, trying to get them educated on the issue and motivated to help spread the work. Cause it sure ain’t coming from the agencies. That’s a lot of the background for why I posted 8 days ago calling for a small army of consultants. Folks need their hands held in order to make this happen. That’s been evident for years, with no substantial end in sight.
This is about as clear as mud - “Zone 0 regulations would move forward this year in tandem with financial assistance and relief for homeowners, proposed in the Governor’s January Budget, and to be augmented by the California Conservation Corps supporting work in vulnerable communities and in coordination with local Fire Safe Councils. While it is anticipated that the regulations would apply to new construction upon taking effect, requirements for existing homes would likely be phased in over three years to allow homeowners to prepare and prioritize mitigations and secure financial assistance.”
Does this mean homeowners will get $ for hardening? Talk about bureaucratese. They kinda sorta hint at it.
I helped build a fire safe garden at RVC-75 in 1993. It had a small replica house with a fire safe clearance and one that did not to show the community what their property should look like. There are community fire safe councils, cwpp’s yada yada. I dont know how any one can live in a wildland area these days and not understand their risk and or blame the govt for not being informed.
Those who live in the WUI areas are definitely a very broad spectrum. There are people who think getting of the grid is the way of their future and truly are not prepared for the continual upkeep of their property to meet the HIZ metrics. On the other side of the spectrum, there are people who live on the property which has been handed down over generations. Many of these people cannot afford or are physically not able to keep up their property with the HIZ clearances. Unfortunately, many of those same people cannot afford insurance, especially from the (un)FAIR Plan. In my side life doing volunteer work for Team Rubicon, we see a lot of people who are not capable either physically or financially to make the changes. Most of them are solid common sense people who simply are stuck between a rock and a hard place trying to create a defensible space
I think you nailed it, @Dozer_Keith. The spectrum is evident in the two starkly different communities affected by the 2025 LA Fires. Even within individual communities like Paradise or Nevada City there is a wide range of financial, physical, and social capacity to get things done. I think the the social part of the problem is is a key sector that the folks who are investing in tech-based wildfire solutions are overlooking. Here is a clip from a video we did about this last year.
https://www.youtube.com/live/uL8f5kwKrOw?si=FU_5XL6oX6pV2J74&t=1564
Sometimes you’re damned if you and damned if you don’t. When I lived in the WUI my property line was 30’ from USFS land. The area was filled with dead standing trees, snags and ground litter. I would laugh as CF always came by doing their LE 100’s. Used to be engine crews then the seasonal abatement gal. She identified the area of concerned. I told her to send a abatement notice to the local SQF USFS FMO office regarding the hazard. Off course she didn’t and didn’t list the hazards on the LE 100. I contacted the FMO and was told sorry we don’t have the staffing or money to go around doing hazard abatement. I said I’d take care of it and hire trees guys myself then. I was told I couldn’t because if was fed land. Basically was told I was on my own in the event of a fire. Sometimes your worst enemy are the ones who you’d expect to protect you telling you to do proper clearances.
Well we had a 2nd fire which posed significant threat to the village. I was evacuated. My son working the Structure Protection Group called and told me they were gonna punch in multi blade line around the east side of the village. The Div boss was an old CF friend of ours and would be there the next day to begin punching in the wide dozer line. I told my son to show him the issues and ask he could help? Next day my son sent a pic from deck of the area of concern and all hazards had been taken care of. Luckily their dozer line held in most areas. Some areas weren’t as lucky, but the structure grp folks mitigated the situation successfully. The problem up there in many areas still exists because the feds won’t do a thing about it. We talk about forest mismanagement?.. Nothing has changed.
We saw a lot of that surveying fuels in Yuba County adjacent to a large CDFW (formerly Cal Fish and Game) reserve. No budget for them to manage fuels, but people have built right up against the property line. And why should CDFW have to cut the brush when their mission is to have a chunk of wildland/habitat for critters and hunters…
I know it may be mind boggling for those of us in the business, @ajohansson, but believe me, at least when it comes to hardening, the vast majority do not understand. One time when I was explaining the importance of defensible space in triaging structure protection at the beginning of a lightning bust, a very intelligent guy with no experience in fire actually argued with me over it.
Agreed however my area was different. The dead standing trees and die back have occurred in recent times. The threat wasn’t there until mismanagement made it so. They did nothing about it. There is nothing of habitat value in diseased and dead standing trees. The severe fire threat in my area has only been in the last several years. Our village has been there eons. Of course we weren’t surrounded by dead forests before either. Mismanagement is only a small part of the equation. Priorities have gone to the wayside over the years.
Zeke, I have to respectfully disagree with your comment that, " why should CDFW have to cut the brush when their mission is to have a chunk of wildland/habitat for critters and hunters…" (?) CDFW’s actual mission statement is to " To manage California’s diverse fish, wildlife, and plant resources, and the habitats upon which they depend, for their ecological values and for their use and enjoyment by the public." I would argue, and have to the Director of Region 2, that without habitat you don’t have to worry about fish, wildlife and plant resources.
CDFW’s responsibilities and commitments in regards to fuels reduction has been on my radar for over 2 decades, and I can say they have been severely lacking in my area.
I live next to the CDFW “managed” Bear River Fishing Access. You may remember this as the origin of the 2021 River Fire. To be clear, there is rarely any fishing at this location, it is primarily a day use access to the river for swimming, and formerly had overnight camping ran by Placer county.
For the last 25 years, I have been prompting CDFW and Placer County, who has “managed” the land via a MOU, to focus on fuel mitigation and revitalizing a well and installing a 10K gallon water tank and 2 hydrants for fire fighting needs. While I had received positive feedback form Placer County, (They actually agreed to the tank and hydrants via email, but it was never constructed), CDFW has never committed to much of anything despite hundreds of standing and downed beetle killed conifers.
The county had (pre River Fire) been using goats annually for fuel mitigation and oversaw some mastication projects. With the newest MOU, written after the River Fire, all fuel mitigation is the responsibility of CDFW. Their response to this was reducing goat grazing by nearly 50% and having the CCC and GBI (Great Basin Institute) do some hand clearing on about 10 acres of the 192+ of the FA. As the Director for this area said in a town hall, we don’t have enough money to manage this property as Placer County did. So here we are
After our neighborhood of 20 residents formed a recognized Firewise Community, I contacted the CDFW land manager with my concerns. One of which was an ignition started by a vehicle off the roadway, which could possibly run up canyon skirting the River Fire scar and threaten the City of Colfax. He replied that it was his responsibility to deal with this property, but his employees had been busy doing mule deer surveys near Hallelujah Junction and dealing with wolfs in other areas of his Region. Obviously this is important work, but a Department should be able to do multiple things at once.
Coincidentally, 3 weeks after I voiced my concerns, there was a car accident on to CDFW land. I sent emails, contacted LEO, provided photos and spoke directly with a Senior Biologist about the accident and the need to remove the overturned vehicle. Well, that was 5 months ago and the car is still in the same location minus 3 of it’s wheels. EDIT: The car is gone as of today! It must have gotten towed out last week
I’ve requested to see the LMP for this area but as one biologist wrote, I doubt there is one, as Fishing Access’ were never a Department priority. I’ve had some good conversations with the local biologist about fuel mitigation and ways to have CF use Washington Ridge or Growlersburg hand crews to do some project work, as was done in the past. While he pointed out that was above his pay grade, he did comment that there was a good working relationship in Yuba County between CDFW and the BC for CF.
So that is an avenue we’re pursuing through the local Fire Council.
I’m cautiously optimistic that we’ll see some CDFW action on this land, but I must agree with @Firedude52 that priorities have not evolved with the changing environment we live in
Patiently awaiting Zeke’s response.
Having a house with a canyon view turns out to be more curse than coup!
It’s easy to write it in a plan, but nobody has the resources for a perpetual war on vegetation. Plan on the calvary not coming.
Here’s a look at some of the vegetation in the area we are talking about:
Our neighborhood has planned for no one to come. As I said, we were less than one mile from the origin of the River Fire, so we’ve heard the sounds of hi lo sirens. As I like to say, there are 2 types of homeowners, those that have had to evacuate and those who haven’t.
Here is a picture of Milk Ranch road, which is the egress out of BRFA. I sent this to Placer County to prompt them to at least mow the shoulders. i appreciate that vegetation management is a growing problem, but private homeowners can only do so much along state and county owned lands.
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.
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.
