Monterey County has been mapped by the national Wildland Fire Leadership Council at the highest priority of need for landscape scale wildfire fuel reduction work.
According to the Wildfire Risk to Communities website developed by the US Forest Service to help communities apply for grants to help reduce the threat from wildfires, Monterey County "is considered 'at risk.' It has a higher Wildfire Risk to Homes than 94.8% of counties in the nation."
According to the Wildfire Risk to Communities website developed by the US Forest Service to help communities apply for grants to help reduce the threat from wildfires, Monterey County "is considered 'at risk.' It has a higher Wildfire Risk to Homes than 94.8% of counties in the nation."
Monterey County's cities make up less than 2 percent of the County's 2.1 million acres, so most land in the county in need of wildfire fuel reduction work outside federal jurisdiction falls within County jurisdiction (about 1.5 million acres).
You can see CAL FIRE's Fire and Resource Assessment Program's recently updated Fire Hazard Severity Zone Map for Monterey County here (the map omits federal lands and and local responsibility lands). (The Fire Hazard Severity Zone Map is currently subject to change as explained here, and proposed changes can be viewed here.)
How did we get to this point, with much of Monterey County hazardously overgrown waiting for a fire to start on a day with the kind of unprecedented winds that drove the deadly Camp Fire to our north, and Woolsey Fire to our south?
In the early 1900's, influenced by the Big Burn of 1910, national policy was put in place to work to put out every wildfire as swiftly as possible.
An unintended consequence has been that when wildfires are suppressed, vegetation that would have burned has not, altering the natural fire cycle, causing dead material to accumulate and forests, woodlands, and brushlands to become unnaturally overgrown.
Over time, this increasingly dense vegetation has been fueling hotter/more intense wildfires, resulting in harder to control and larger fires, increasing the threat of wildfires to lives, property, and resources.
This study includes that the wildfire fuel accumulation problem started even before fire suppression policy was put in place, when intentional burning by Indigenous peoples was effectively outlawed in the late 1800s.
Climate change makes the wildfire problem worse, but climate does not burn, only fuel burns, and fuel is the only wildfire factor we can control.
A Wired Magazine article on massive fires quotes a US Forest Service researcher and wildfire computer modeling software developer as saying, "I realized, Oh, my gosh, we’re creating the conditions for mass fires... These fires aren’t just big because of, say, climate change or some accident. They’re big because we have a landscape full of long-burning heavy fuels..."
Adding to the problem of wildfire fuels accumulating due to fire suppression is that, mostly in the 1970s before the wildfire fuel accumulation problem was widely recognized, numerous local, state, and federal environmental laws were enacted that act to make it harder to reduce wildfire fuels to safer levels.
FSCMC is working on a web page about some of those environmental laws that interfere with wildfire fuel reduction work, which is currently under construction. In the meantime, here is a link to a letter the FSCMC wrote to the Board of Supervisors in 2019 that touches on some of the regulatory problems, and proposes a solution that could be implemented swiftly (the Board of Supervisors did not act as requested by that letter). And here is a link to a (redacted) paper that discusses some of the laws that interfere with wildfire fuel reduction work.
The wildfire fuel accumulation problem is not limited to only Monterey County, but Monterey County is a prime example of the problem.
Decades of bipartisan state and federal reports have warned about the wildfire fuel accumulation problem and the critical need to reduce accumulated wildfire fuels to safe more natural levels on a landscape scale, and that failing to do so would result in the kind of catastrophic wildfires we are seeing today.
Some of those reports also discuss the need to amend environmental laws, which are now outdated and counterproductive in the context of the need to reduce wildfire fuels, as they can act to hinder and block wildfire fuel reduction work from taking place by adding costs, delays, requirements, restrictions, threats of fines and jail-time, and opportunity for litigation.
Those decades of warnings have essentially gone unheeded by local, state, and federal lawmakers, and we are seeing the results in continued accumulation of wildfire fuels and increasingly catastrophic wildfires.
Read this wired.com article to learn why wildfires are now growing even worse than were foreseen in the state and federal reports linked to above.
George E Gruell found photographs of forested landscapes, from as far back as 1849, then found where the photos were taken from, and took photographs to show the difference in amount of vegetation some 100 years of fire exclusion has made on the landscape. You can see an example of two of his photos here, and can buy his book, Fire in Sierra Nevada Forests: A Photographic Interpretation of Ecological Change Since 1849, with many such comparison photos.
The US Forest Service composite image below shows conversion of forestland to brushland near Colorado's Cheesman Reservoir, caused by fuel accumulation due to about 100 years of wildfire suppression, combined with devastation by the Hayman Fire in 2002, which the forest did not recover from, converting forests to brushlands (click on photo to enlarge).
You can see CAL FIRE's Fire and Resource Assessment Program's recently updated Fire Hazard Severity Zone Map for Monterey County here (the map omits federal lands and and local responsibility lands). (The Fire Hazard Severity Zone Map is currently subject to change as explained here, and proposed changes can be viewed here.)
How did we get to this point, with much of Monterey County hazardously overgrown waiting for a fire to start on a day with the kind of unprecedented winds that drove the deadly Camp Fire to our north, and Woolsey Fire to our south?
In the early 1900's, influenced by the Big Burn of 1910, national policy was put in place to work to put out every wildfire as swiftly as possible.
An unintended consequence has been that when wildfires are suppressed, vegetation that would have burned has not, altering the natural fire cycle, causing dead material to accumulate and forests, woodlands, and brushlands to become unnaturally overgrown.
Over time, this increasingly dense vegetation has been fueling hotter/more intense wildfires, resulting in harder to control and larger fires, increasing the threat of wildfires to lives, property, and resources.
This study includes that the wildfire fuel accumulation problem started even before fire suppression policy was put in place, when intentional burning by Indigenous peoples was effectively outlawed in the late 1800s.
Climate change makes the wildfire problem worse, but climate does not burn, only fuel burns, and fuel is the only wildfire factor we can control.
A Wired Magazine article on massive fires quotes a US Forest Service researcher and wildfire computer modeling software developer as saying, "I realized, Oh, my gosh, we’re creating the conditions for mass fires... These fires aren’t just big because of, say, climate change or some accident. They’re big because we have a landscape full of long-burning heavy fuels..."
Adding to the problem of wildfire fuels accumulating due to fire suppression is that, mostly in the 1970s before the wildfire fuel accumulation problem was widely recognized, numerous local, state, and federal environmental laws were enacted that act to make it harder to reduce wildfire fuels to safer levels.
FSCMC is working on a web page about some of those environmental laws that interfere with wildfire fuel reduction work, which is currently under construction. In the meantime, here is a link to a letter the FSCMC wrote to the Board of Supervisors in 2019 that touches on some of the regulatory problems, and proposes a solution that could be implemented swiftly (the Board of Supervisors did not act as requested by that letter). And here is a link to a (redacted) paper that discusses some of the laws that interfere with wildfire fuel reduction work.
The wildfire fuel accumulation problem is not limited to only Monterey County, but Monterey County is a prime example of the problem.
Decades of bipartisan state and federal reports have warned about the wildfire fuel accumulation problem and the critical need to reduce accumulated wildfire fuels to safe more natural levels on a landscape scale, and that failing to do so would result in the kind of catastrophic wildfires we are seeing today.
Some of those reports also discuss the need to amend environmental laws, which are now outdated and counterproductive in the context of the need to reduce wildfire fuels, as they can act to hinder and block wildfire fuel reduction work from taking place by adding costs, delays, requirements, restrictions, threats of fines and jail-time, and opportunity for litigation.
Those decades of warnings have essentially gone unheeded by local, state, and federal lawmakers, and we are seeing the results in continued accumulation of wildfire fuels and increasingly catastrophic wildfires.
Read this wired.com article to learn why wildfires are now growing even worse than were foreseen in the state and federal reports linked to above.
George E Gruell found photographs of forested landscapes, from as far back as 1849, then found where the photos were taken from, and took photographs to show the difference in amount of vegetation some 100 years of fire exclusion has made on the landscape. You can see an example of two of his photos here, and can buy his book, Fire in Sierra Nevada Forests: A Photographic Interpretation of Ecological Change Since 1849, with many such comparison photos.
The US Forest Service composite image below shows conversion of forestland to brushland near Colorado's Cheesman Reservoir, caused by fuel accumulation due to about 100 years of wildfire suppression, combined with devastation by the Hayman Fire in 2002, which the forest did not recover from, converting forests to brushlands (click on photo to enlarge).
More local to Monterey County, below is a photo from Pat Hathaway's collection of historic photographs, courtesy of Monterey County Historical Society, with a view from Mission Ranch towards Jacks Peak, with Carmel Mission in the foreground, circa 1920.
Counterintuitively, a single wildfire through overgrown areas may not solve the fuel accumulation problem, and can instead make it worse, with many dead standing trees left in place. Click on the image below to see a photograph of large dead black oak trees left in place after the Soberanes Fire burned through an area that had not burned in about 100 years due to fire suppression (fire 2016, photo 2019).
Those dead trees are now more fuel when another fire burns through the area, threatening live oak trees that survived the Soberanes Fire, potentially converting the woodland to brushland, similar to as demonstrated by the Forest Service's Cheesman Reservoir composite image above.
A recent study that radiocarbon-dated smoke particles from the KMP Complex Fire, found that large dead trees were a substantial contributing factor to the fire's severity, and also contributed to release of small particulate matter that is harmful to health, reported on here.
Undergrowth in the Soberanes Fire burn area regrew rapidly due to more sunlight reaching the ground due to tree-leaf-loss from the fire, leaf mulch that had been collecting for decades being burned off the ground exposing seeds that had long laid dormant (including invasive species like genista), and ashes acting as fertilizer. The area was ready to burn again three years after the fire.
Devastating wildfires fueled by hazardous accumulations of wildfire fuels have caused and will continue to cause a multitude of harms until we reduce fuels to safe more natural levels. For example:
A recent study that radiocarbon-dated smoke particles from the KMP Complex Fire, found that large dead trees were a substantial contributing factor to the fire's severity, and also contributed to release of small particulate matter that is harmful to health, reported on here.
Undergrowth in the Soberanes Fire burn area regrew rapidly due to more sunlight reaching the ground due to tree-leaf-loss from the fire, leaf mulch that had been collecting for decades being burned off the ground exposing seeds that had long laid dormant (including invasive species like genista), and ashes acting as fertilizer. The area was ready to burn again three years after the fire.
Devastating wildfires fueled by hazardous accumulations of wildfire fuels have caused and will continue to cause a multitude of harms until we reduce fuels to safe more natural levels. For example:
- Hundreds of people have been burned alive (wildfires indiscriminately kill people of all incomes, all ages, all races, all religious and political beliefs), for example, see here, here, and here.
- Many thousands of structures have been destroyed by wildfires, contributing to California's homelessness crisis, and fire insurance cancellations, non-renewals, and dramatic fire insurance cost increases.
- A study by the Nature Conservancy and Willis Towers Watson, the third largest insurance broker in the world, found that residential insurance costs can be reduced by 41% "when ecological forestry" is applied to relevant areas ("which includes prescribed burns and the removal of smaller trees and other vegetation in overgrown forests (i.e.: thinning)"). You can read about that here, and can read the study here.
- Inability to obtain fire insurance is making it harder to buy a home and adversely affecting the real estate industry, as lenders will not provide a loan to purchase a home unless the borrower can obtain fire insurance, for example, see this news story.
- Millions of tons of greenhouse gases have been released, negating much of California's greenhouse gas reduction efforts.
- Creeks, rivers, and reservoirs are being eroded and silted up, reducing reservoir capacity, due to wildfire-caused hydrophobic soils in winters following wildfires, e.g., see here, and here.
|
|
- California's agriculture economy suffers tremendous losses from wildfires, both from direct attack, such as destruction of vineyard facilities and vines by wildfires, for example, here, and here, and by smoke and ash affecting marketability of crops, for example, here.
- Wildlife, pets, and livestock are killed by the millions as a result of wildfires, including protected threatened and endangered species, (warning, disturbing images) see here, here, here, here, here, here, and here.
- Public utilities fear being sued if their equipment starts a fire in overgrown vegetation, so they conduct preemptive Public Safety Power Shutoffs during hot windy weather, leaving millions of people without power, including people in urban areas far from the direct threat of wildfires, some threatened by the loss of power.
- Rural schools suffer hardships, and children's education is set back, lasting for years after a wildfire.
- A recent study found that wildfire smoke can decrease power output from solar power plants by up to 30 percent, interfering with planning power needs for the power grid and making it harder to reliably supplement the grid with solar power (reported on here).
- According to this paper by the Department of Homeland Security, terrorists are aware of the hazardously overgrown nature of our forests and woodlands, the high costs associated with suppressing wildfires, the long-term adverse impacts from wildfires, the psychological harm from wildfires, the low cost and lack of training needed to start wildfires, and have advocated in their magazines and on their websites that wildfires be set to cause economic and psychological harm, naming California as an ideal target. Here is a news report on an ISIS supporter who said he planned to set fires in the Berkeley Hills (he was sentenced to over 15 years in prison).
- According to Global Forest Watch (GFW [it may take time for that page to load]), Monterey County lost about 39 percent of its tree cover between 2000 and 2021, almost all of that loss during years with large wildfires (2008, Basin Fire; 2016, Soberanes Fire; 2020, Dolan, River, and Carmel fires).
GFW shows trees that were killed-but-not-consumed by wildfires as tree cover loss, however, many remain in place dead and dry, ready to act as fuel for the next wildfire, increasing the threat of future fires to trees that survived. Click the images below for a larger view, then use the escape key to reduce.
Our county has been fortunate we have not seen a major wildfire under the kind of sustained high winds that have driven deadly wildfires in counties to the north and south, but that could change any dry day with a strong wind.
Given the decades of reports and other information above, it is difficult to understand why regulatory roadblocks to wildfire fuel reduction work remain in place.
In recent years, there has been movement toward utilizing Indigenous land management practices to help reduce wildfire fuels. This technique, now known as prescribed burning, is being promoted as a method for maintaining habitat health. Allowing these low-intensity fires to burn causes a necessary disturbance amongst the vegetation, which then inspires new growth.
Where feasible, and when done in a controlled manner, prescribed fire can be an effective land management tool. The practice of cultural burning was an integral part of life for many Indigenous groups throughout the west coast to promote healthy ecosystems and reduce the risk of dangerous, uncontrolled wildfires.
Before a prescribed burn is conducted, specialists spend time creating a plan detailing where the fire will be and what they hope to accomplish. Controlled burns are done only during optimal conditions to prevent fires from spreading too quickly. They are done under proper supervision and with a team of trained fire-lighters. To learn more about prescribed burns and their value, check out the Central Coast Prescribed Burn Association at calpba.org
Below is a video describing the benefits of prescribed burns, and how they can be conducted.
Prescribed burns are not a panacea however. Even CAL FIRE has had prescribed fires escape, for example, you can watch a video about the Estrada Fire, which was started by an escaped CAL FIRE prescribed burn. The US Forest Service has also had prescribed burns escape, for example, the Hermits Peak Fire in New Mexico in 2022, which burned hundreds of homes, was an escaped prescribed burn.
A problem with prescribed burns is that in areas with densely overgrown fuels, as in much of Monterey County, wildfire fuels must first be reduced "to a safe burning density" (see page 13 in that linked-to paper) before prescribed fire can be implemented.
Below is an outstanding video, which discusses benefits of prescribed fire, and the need to prepare overgrown areas with mechanized wildfire fuel reduction work before prescribed fire can be used, starting at 10minutes, 5 seconds into the video.
Unfortunately, numerous local, state, and federal laws interfere with public and private landowners performing that critical preparatory wildfire fuel reduction work to enable prescribed fires to be used at the scale needed to meaningfully reduce the threat of wildfire in Monterey County.
The video below is from Australia's Country Fire Authority, but what it teaches about production and flight of embers during wildfires is universal, and applies in Monterey County and everywhere wildfires burn.
The video below is from Australia's Country Fire Authority, but what it teaches about production and flight of embers during wildfires is universal, and applies in Monterey County and everywhere wildfires burn.
The PBS Frontline video below on what happened during the Camp Fire to the town of Paradise should be a warning to everyone in overgrown areas in Monterey County of what can happen here if a fire starts on a dry day with high winds.
Please watch the video and let it motivate you to act to prepare for catastrophic wildfire before one starts (reduce vegetation to density levels described in the Board for Forestry's General Guidelines for Creating Defensible Space (including the new no ignition zone, Zone 0, with nothing flammable from 0 to 5 feet away from structures), and use the visual guide below the video to help you harden your home to better resist ignition by embers and flames).
How many more lives, homes, trees and wildlife will be lost to wildfires due to regulatory hindrances to wildfire fuel reduction work is largely up to our local, state, and federal elected representatives.
You can help solve the wildfire problem by letting your elected representatives know you will support them if they amend environmental laws to allow and facilitate wildfire fuel reduction work without regulatory hindrance.
In its letter to the Monterey County Board of Supervisors, FSCMC proposed ways to solve the regulatory roadblock problem that could be implemented swiftly by the Board of Supervisors and the Governor.
Unfortunately, in the years since that letter was written the Board of Supervisors has not acted as requested.
Please communicate to your elected representatives that you support those short-term solutions of suspending laws to enable reducing wildfire fuels generally to the densities described in the General Guidelines for Creating Defensible Space, as well as long-term solutions by amending local, state, and federal environmental laws to enable wildfire fuel reduction work without regulatory hindrance.
You can learn who your elected representatives are and how to contact them by:
It appears that environmental laws that are now outdated and counterproductive in the context of the need to reduce wildfire fuels to safe more natural levels will not be amended until elected representatives hear from enough of their constituents that they will support them if they act. Please help by letting elected representatives know you will support them if they amend environmental laws to allow and facilitate wildfire fuel reduction work without regulatory hindrance.
You can help solve the wildfire problem by letting your elected representatives know you will support them if they amend environmental laws to allow and facilitate wildfire fuel reduction work without regulatory hindrance.
In its letter to the Monterey County Board of Supervisors, FSCMC proposed ways to solve the regulatory roadblock problem that could be implemented swiftly by the Board of Supervisors and the Governor.
Unfortunately, in the years since that letter was written the Board of Supervisors has not acted as requested.
Please communicate to your elected representatives that you support those short-term solutions of suspending laws to enable reducing wildfire fuels generally to the densities described in the General Guidelines for Creating Defensible Space, as well as long-term solutions by amending local, state, and federal environmental laws to enable wildfire fuel reduction work without regulatory hindrance.
You can learn who your elected representatives are and how to contact them by:
- Monterey County Supervisor: Search for your address on the map on this page, then find their contact information on this page (that map also shows the size of Supervisorial Districts).
- State Assemblymember and State Senator: Enter your address on this page, then click on the links to their websites and get their contact information.
- Congressman: Enter your zip code on this page, then click on the link under their picture to be taken to their website, then get their contact information there.
- US Senators for California are Laphonza Butler and Alex Padilla, and their contact pages on their websites are here and here respectively.
It appears that environmental laws that are now outdated and counterproductive in the context of the need to reduce wildfire fuels to safe more natural levels will not be amended until elected representatives hear from enough of their constituents that they will support them if they act. Please help by letting elected representatives know you will support them if they amend environmental laws to allow and facilitate wildfire fuel reduction work without regulatory hindrance.
Watch the videos below to learn what firefighters look for as they decide during wildfires which homes to use their limited resources trying to protect
|
|