Marin fire crews clear fuels ahead of dry season

Fire crews ascended Mount Tamalpais this week to set ablaze dozens of piles of shrubs, grasses and woody debris in a controlled burn to reduce the fire fuel loads in the watershed.

The late-spring work is part of an aggressive strategy to remove flammable vegetation from the county’s open spaces in preparation for the fire season ahead.

“The risk of wildfire is much greater than it was 50 years ago,” said Miguel Samayoa, a recruit in training with the FIRE Foundry program who was under the supervision of county firefighters on the front lines of the burn.

The foundry, officially the Fire Innovation, Recruitment and Education Foundry, is designed to increase racial and gender diversity in the fire service. The Marin County Fire Department has secured a $1.9 million grant to continue the foundry fuels crew, which is made up of 13 recruits led by a county fire captain.

The team is tasked with removing fuel loads year-round. Under the supervision of the Tamalpais Fire Crew, the county’s team of vegetation management specialists, the crews worked in partnership with the Marin Municipal Water District, the managers of the Mount Tamalpais watershed. Conservation Corps North Bay also supports the effort.

The combined crews ignited piles that were compiled over the past year and left to dry for prime burning conditions.

“The forests are basically full of fuel, and that’s where we come in and get rid of all that fuel, dead trees and do these pile burns,” Samayoa said.

And there are still plenty of piles to burn, officials said.

Marin County fire Battalion Chief Jordan Reeser, who oversees the Tam crews, the foundry recruits and vegetation management, said crews average about 40 to 50 piles per day.

The Tam crew tackles vegetation management projects across the county. It also responds to wildland fires to build containment lines, fell hazardous trees and mop up fires.

In the right conditions, crews can handle more than 300 pile burns in a week, Reeser said.

“The water district has been pretty aggressive for the past couple of months, and we will all try to continue at the same pace for the next week or two, if we can,” Reeser said.

This year to date, the water district has covered 1,500 acres of watershed lands performing fuel reduction, fuel break maintenance, broom pulling, roadside mowing and other vegetation management methods, said Matt Samson, vice president of the water district board.

“Pile burning, along with the other forms of vegetation management, are all actions necessary to take before we can return good, low-intensity, prescribed wide-area fires to our fire-adaptive landscape,” Samson said. “While pile-burning activities will soon cease when the start of fire season is announced, other types of vegetation management methods will continue as we can’t ever let our guard down.”

Marin County fire Chief Jason Weber said the bountiful rain this year has created prime conditions to tackle vegetation management projects. Those projects provide perfect training opportunities for recruits, such as the foundry members, and seasonal hires, who will be coming on in the next month.

This year, there will be 184 seasonal employees joining the county fire department for the summer starting in June. That’s a big jump from years past. In 2017, for example, there were 70 seasonal recruits, Weber said. The Tamalpais Fire Crew has also grown to more than 50 members, he said. The growth is thanks to a $5 million state grant that came last year, Weber said.

Beginning July 4, there will be four 16-person crews, allowing for crew coverage seven days a week, Reeser said.

As always, the fire threat is weather dependent, and the forecast is never certain, Reeser said.

“We’re getting refreshed and ready for the fire season,” Reeser said. “We’re preparing ourselves like we always do.”

“We’ve got quite a bit of work ahead,” Weber added, saying there is a host of projects to build defensible space, fuel breaks and clear fire fuels across Marin.

“We’re doing our part,” Weber said. “The public needs to do theirs by creating defensible space around their homes. When every neighbor starts to do this, it creates communitywide resiliency, which is what we’re trying to build.”