San Diegans: Contact Your County Supervisor About Fire Management

This entry was posted by harry s truman on Friday, March 20th, 2009 at 12:28 pm.

From the Chaparral Institute:

On March 25th, The San Diego County Board of Supervisors will be considering a vegetation management report that focuses on the reduction of native vegetation as a way to reduce fire risk.

The current final draft of the report is the result of nearly a year of meetings and negotiations between fire scientists, fire professionals, and county personnel. Unfortunately, the process was not completely open and many important stakeholders where not invited to comment such as watershed managers, municipal fire agencies, conservation groups, and others.

Together we can help the county not only improve their report, but the overall fire safety of our region.

I urge you to email your county supervisor with a variation of the following message (adapted from the Chaparral Institute’s statement).

I would like to comment on the recently issued SD County Vegetation Report.

The final draft of this report is better than earlier versions, but I am disappointed that the process of negotiating it was not completely open. Many important stakeholders were not invited to comment such as watershed managers, municipal fire agencies, conservation groups, and others. As a result, the current draft remains flawed and inadequate. It ignores critical factors in managing fire risk; additionally, the reduction of native vegetation in the backcountry is an unacceptable way to reduce fire risk. Moreover, the report fails to address numerous measures that would more effectively impact fire prevention in San Diego County.

– Nearly every home destroyed during the 2007 Witch Creek Fire was ignited by embers, not walls of flame as is usually imagined. The report fails to provide solutions for this problem.

– A significant number of homes in the 2003 and 2007 fires were ignited and destroyed due to flaming ornamental vegetation, especially palm trees and acacia. The report mentions this problem, but fails to provide a solution.

– After repeated fires, many areas in San Diego County are now covered with highly flammable weeds. In fact, the San Dieguito River drainage along Highway 78 between Ramona and Escondido has such a high concentration of weeds that under the right conditions, a fire there could move faster and potentially devastate a greater area than the Witch Creek fire that burned the same area in 2007. The report fails to acknowledge the severity of this issue.

– San Diego County remains the most under-served region for fire protection in the entire state of California. In fact, other fire agencies in the state refer to SD County as a “welfare county” when it comes to fire protection. The report completely fails to address this issue.

While wildland vegetation management directly around homes and communities is a critical factor in the fire risk reduction equation, the report’s nearly exclusive focus on modifying wildland vegetation in the backcountry is an unacceptable and tragic error in leadership. By focusing so much attention on backcountry wildland vegetation, the county will fail to achieve what our region needs most-–a comprehensive plan to protect lives, property and natural resources from fire. This is why we are asking the Board of Supervisors to do two things before they accept the report:

1. Hire a professional fire consultant group to assess the fire protection needs of San Diego County and how best to meet those needs. This has been done by a number of fire agencies in the region, most recently the North County Fire Protection District (http://www.thevillagenews.com/story.php?story_id=35345).

2. Conduct a California Environmental Quality Act (CEQA) review of the report to insure vegetation management activities will not end up increasing fire risk by encouraging the spread of invasive, flammable weeds and unnecessarily damage the natural environment we all enjoy.

Sincerely,