Given the events in Southern California earlier this month it is difficult to pick any other topic to discuss.  The Eaton Fire and the Palisades Fire will go down as one of, if not the, most destructive fires in California History and they occurred in January.  The idea of “Fire Season” is no longer an accurate mindset.  We need to be vigilant 12 months out of the year. 

Clearly, these fires have stoked concern here locally and I, along with most Chiefs around the area, have been answering questions from the public on a daily basis.  Most of those questions center around a few specific issues.  Fuels management, home hardening, municipal water systems and evacuation planning have been the focus of concern and I’d like to take this opportunity to address them this month. 

Fuels management here in the Tahoe Basin has been a high priority for over two decades.  Every local, state and federal fire agency is engaged in some sort of fuels reduction program.  More often than not the funding for those programs comes from state and federal agencies such as the US Forest Service, Bureau of Land Management, Cal Fire, Tahoe Resource Conservation District and the California Tahoe Conservancy.  Efforts are well coordinated among the agencies. 

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The Tahoe Fire and Fuels Team is a collaborative group that includes federal, tribal, state and local conservation, land management and fire agencies.  The intent is to create fire-resistant and healthy forests.  We have seen large-scale fires here locally with the Angora Fire, the Tamarack Fire and the Caldor Fire.  Fuels reduction work has been proven time and time again to minimize fire intensity and speed which can give communities like ours a fighting chance.  With that said, fuels reduction is not a magic bullet—it is just one of several components to improving safety when living in the forest. 

Home hardening and maintaining defensible space is arguably the most effective option for a homeowner.  Fires that impact communities are typically throwing embers well ahead of the firefront.  Those embers find their way into attics, under decks, into wood piles and into flammable material immediately adjacent to your home. 

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Once a home is ignited the amount of heat energy produced is enough to ignite the neighboring house.  When this happens on a larger scale you see the shift from a large wildfire into a true urban conflagration much like what we saw in Pacific Palisades, Altadena and Pasadena.  Things like fire-rated attic and crawl space vents, maintaining non-combustible landscaping within 0-5 feet of your home, double or triple paned windows, following defensible space requirements, non-combustible roofing and siding and keeping yourself well informed of conditions are all components of “home hardening”. 

The single greatest obstacle to home hardening is cost.  We are seeing federal and state funding for fuels management but providing funding to individual homeowners to do work on private property is a heavy lift.  We are working on it but this is an item that I would encourage everyone to get involved with and maybe send a letter to your elected leaders. 

Another hot topic is our municipal water systems around the Tahoe Basin and even in the Washoe and Carson Valleys.  After seeing reports of dry hydrants and firefighters unable to fill their engines during the fires last month we are fielding all kinds of questions about our individual systems.  Municipal water systems are normally not designed to maintain the kind of demand you will see during a catastrophic fire.  Those systems are designed to meet daily needs. 

Normally for any given structure fire we have an ample supply of water with well-spaced fire hydrants and water districts with interconnected systems as well as auxiliary pumps designed to bolster water pressure when needed.  Events like the Eaton and Palisades fires are truly categorized as natural disasters with 80-100 mph winds driving them. No water system in the country is designed to mitigate fires of that size.

Because of that the fire service has several other options available which is why you will see air tankers making water and retardant drops and bulldozers building fire breaks during these large fires.  With all of that said there is still work to be done.  Our local water districts have been making steady improvements over the last several decades but more is still needed.  The Tahoe Water for Fire Suppression Partnership is a bi-state collaborative formed to accelerate the installation of resilient water infrastructure to meet suppression needs.  Another topic you might want to ask your elected officials to assist with! 

With regard to evacuation planning, we are addressing needs here in the basin by prioritizing fuels reduction along evacuation routes which makes them safer to use during a fire.  Building more roads in the basin is most likely not going to happen and we have to be proactive about addressing viable options.  The Lake Tahoe Regional Fire Chiefs Association worked with our law enforcement partners to build the Lake Tahoe Regional Evacuation Plan. 

This document can be found on the El Dorado County web page among other places.  It is a living document and was developed to provide up-to-date information to the public but also to allow agencies to work together more effectively during an event.  The largest concern is the thought of having to initiate a large-scale evacuation during busy summer weekends. 

As has been reported in the last year or so, we do not have the road infrastructure to rapidly move everyone out of the basin all at once.  Evacuating the south shore alone would take a considerable amount of time and may not be the best choice.  Temporary Refuge Areas, or TRAs, may be a better option than trying to drive away.  Leaving early and signing up for notification apps like Perimeter and Watch Duty are highly encouraged. 

Ultimately, having a multi-faceted approach to fire safety is necessary for our mountain communities.  We live in the wildland-urban interface which means we all have some personal responsibility and some inherent risk when it comes to how we interact with Mother Nature. 

Our collective efforts and awareness are what gives us the best chance when it comes to wildfire.  There is no single fix or magic bullet.  Fuels management, home hardening, improving water infrastructure, and reinforcing our evacuation routes are all necessary components. These are all high priorities for the agencies here in the Tahoe area but there is still more work to be done. 

For more information reach out to your local fire department.  They can help you with defensible space options, guide you toward becoming a Firewise community and provide you with options to help harden your own home.  We can’t make our communities fire proof but we can do (and are doing) real work to minimize our risk. 

Jim Drennan, Fire Chief SLTFR