Marin County Fire Department expects milder fire season

Fidel Tupul cuts dead branches in the Mount Tamalpais watershed near Sky Oaks Road in Fairfax on August 24, 2023. He was part of a team hired by the Marin Wildfire Prevention Authority to reduce nearby fire fuels residences. (Alan Dep/Marin Independent Journal)

Marin County Fire Chief Jason Weber gave county supervisors an optimistic outlook for the fire season.

“Thanks to some late rain, a somewhat gray May and the forecasted gloom in June, we got off to a slower start, which is a good thing,” Weber said at the May 21 briefing. do the fuel reduction job.

Weber displayed county maps predicting fire risks for the summer months. Areas in green denote a lower than normal fire risk and those in red a higher than normal risk.

“Unlike previous years in recent history, where there was a lot of red on the board due to prolonged, prolonged drought,” Weber said, “California was able to emerge from drought, and our weather conditions fuel and our general outlook is quite good this season.”

Fire risk in May was normal and is expected to improve to below normal during June and July. The fire risk in August should be normal.

“But with the transition from El Niño to La Niña, we expect a very active fall,” Weber said.

Over the past year, Marin Fire Departments have reduced fuels used on approximately 75 miles of evacuation corridors and created 32 miles of shaded firebreaks by removing some trees and understory vegetation while by retaining the tree canopy, Weber noted.

About 33,000 home inspections were conducted in Marin last year to determine whether homeowners are creating defensible space around their homes by eliminating combustible materials.

Despite a 2019 civil grand jury recommendation that the county enforce defensible space requirements with citations, San Rafael is the only jurisdiction in the county to do so.

Quinn Gardner, San Rafael's emergency manager, said the city has issued 307 citations since it started the enforcement policy about a year ago.

“Approximately 76% of people resolved the issue before receiving a second citation and so the $250 fee was waived,” Gardner wrote in an email.

Gardner said of the 72 people who received a second citation, about 68 percent complied with the requirement. Twenty-three people received a third citation, which includes a $500 fine.

Weber told his supervisors that about $5 million a year in state funding in recent years has allowed him to expand his fire crew.

“We went from about 74 full-time equivalents in 2017 to about 147 today,” Weber said. “We went from about 70 seasonal firefighters to about 184.”

The county also once again made arrangements to use one of Pacific Gas & Electric Co.'s UH-60 Black Hawk helicopters during the fire season, Weber said. The helicopter will be based at Gnoss Field in Novato.

Weber told supervisors the county has been fortunate to have received millions of dollars from the state in recent years to reduce flammable vegetation. However, with the state now facing a structural deficit for years to come, he said Marin will likely need to be more self-reliant.

Supervisor Stephanie Moulton-Peters said, “We need to have discussions about compromise. Preventing fires will probably cost us more, as will sea level rise. I don't think there's any escaping it. We'll have to make room and live with it.