The Challenge.
Residents of the Dry Creek-Lokoya Fire District, officials of the California Department of Forestry, Napa Valley Land Stewards Alliance, the Mount Veeder Fire Safe Council, the Napa County Fire Marshall, and other Napa County officials are aware that decades of active wildland fire suppression have left the forest with unnatural and dangerously high fuel levels, exposing us to extreme risk of disastrous wildfire. We know that fire is inevitable, that it is only a matter of time before our area burns again. If the fire hazard is not somehow reduced, the next fire could have dire consequences for all of us and for the natural environment, including huge fire suppression costs, loss of life and property, air pollution, destruction of the forest and its wildlife, massive erosion, and severe damage to river habitat. Unfortunately, State and County budgets are strained and due to safety issues much of the fire fighting aerial tanker fleet has been grounded, leaving us with diminished fire fighting capability.
Our Response.
Therefore, Dry Creek-Lokoya Fire District residents propose to work closely with CDF to defend ourselves, our property, and the forest, by reducing the risk and severity of wildfire in our district through the restoration of the forest to the safer and more natural fuel levels that existed prior to man’s intervention. We feel this can best be accomplished through a joint effort by CDF, Napa County government, Napa Valley Land Stewards Alliance, the Mount Veeder Fire Safe Council, and private property owners. Accordingly, we are proposing a public/private fire hazard reduction program in our area that could eventually be expanded to include other areas, or which could serve as a model for similar efforts in other areas of the County.
Common Goals.
Our primary goal is to reduce the likelihood and severity of destruction of our District’s forests by wildfire, with its accompanying environmental and ecological disruptions, death, injury, suffering, property damage, and high costs of fire suppression. To achieve this goal, we feel we must:
1. Recruit, educate, inspire, motivate, enable, and mobilize private property owners to take individual responsibility for fire hazard reduction.
2. Secure local government cooperation in removing any regulatory barriers or bureaucratic obstacles, and local government assistance in G.I.S. mapping of the proposed network of fire roads, fuel breaks, shaded fuel breaks, water supplies, and potential CDF staging areas.
3. Work with CDF to design and implement a strategic network of fire roads, fire breaks, and shaded fuel breaks that provide safe, quick CDF access to feasible lines of defense against wildfire.
4. Encourage restoration of the forest to safer and more natural fuel load levels through a concerted effort to remove excess fuel wherever feasible, and especially around homes and other structures.
5. Find ways to reduce and defray the cost of fuel removal.
Leadership.
Explaining and publicizing the danger, offering a concrete plan to reduce that danger, and demonstrating a coordinated effort to implement that plan will inspire many others to join us. Providing them with examples, encouragement, assistance, and recognition will help ensure their continuing participation. Eliminating and precluding all regulatory and bureaucratic barriers, red tape, fees, and other disincentives will help sustain the enthusiasm necessary for this totally voluntary program to succeed.
Strategy.
Residents and CDF are already working together to restore existing fire roads and wish to cooperate further in designing, clearing, and mapping an expanded network of fire roads, fuel breaks, shaded fuel breaks, and water supplies. This network will serve to compartmentalize the forest into defensible areas, so that if one area burns, adjacent areas might be saved. It will provide accessible, defensible perimeters around each of those areas, staging areas for CDF operations, logical and feasible places to take a stand against an advancing fire, and water to fight the fire. The network will also provide vehicle access for continued maintenance of the fuel break system.
The network can be based on and built around the existing network of old fire roads and private driveways. Although many of those old fire roads have not been maintained in recent years, they can be readily restored to serviceable condition. Once they are passable by vehicle and thus accessible to trailer-mounted chippers and other equipment, they can be improved to become shaded fuel breaks. Many existing clearings and vineyards are already good fuel breaks and can be utilized to economically expand the network by adding new shaded fuel breaks to connect them. As new vineyards are developed, they too can be used to expand and improve the network. The entire network, including all water supplies, can be accurately mapped using G.P.S. and the County’s G.I.S. system.
The completed network will help compartmentalize the forest, provide feasible lines of defense, better, safer, and faster CDF access from County roads, and in some cases secondary emergency egress for residents in case of fire. Existing private driveways can be incorporated into the network as shaded fuel breaks and to provide access from County roads to the rest of the network.
Tactics.
Fuels to be removed from the shaded fuel breaks under this program include fallen trees, dead and dying trees, fallen limbs, underbrush, and most small limbs under two inches in diameter within 8 feet of the ground, as well as selected trees whose removal will reduce tree density to a safe and healthy level. Underbrush can be removed by goats, by chain saw and chipper, by mobile brush mulching machinery, by chain saw and pile burning, by bulldozer and pile burning, or by prescribed burning, depending on individual site characteristics and owner preference. Although pushing brush into piles with bulldozers and burning the piles is not appropriate everywhere, it can be a practical and harmless solution in some areas, such as along ridge tops where slope is minimal and there is no concentrated water flow and therefore very little risk of erosion. Similarly, prescribed burning may not be appropriate or desirable everywhere, but in some places it may be the only feasible solution (with CDF approval).
Costs and Rewards.
Fuel removal by any means is time consuming and costly. Some grant money is occasionally available for the creation of shaded fuel breaks (Mount Veeder Fire Safe Council has already obtained one or two small grants for this purpose), but this project could languish for decades if we sit around waiting for grants. If we want to protect our forest, this work needs to be done now, and this means it must be done largely at our own expense. We all stand to benefit greatly if we can make it possible for CDF to stop the fire before it destroys our homes, our property, and our forest.
If we publicize the concept and the strategy, demonstrate what can be done, suggest how to do it, show how it fits into the grand plan, and explain the benefits, most property owners will recognize that it is in their own best interest to participate. We can increase the level of participation by eliminating barriers, minimizing costs, and finding ways to help defray the costs. Costs might be defrayed through the sale of fire wood or other wood products, through local tax breaks, or with public and private grants.
Getting Started.
The keys to success of this voluntary program are information, education, publicity, promotion, cooperation, enthusiasm, and action. We need to sell and promote the basic idea in order to draw as many property owners into the detailed planning as possible. People involved in the planning will be more likely to participate, because they will be more likely to feel that it is "their" project.
Although we can't expect 100% participation, the rest of us can pick up the slack and get the job done. The time to start is now.