Fire officials share insight on recent fires, local prevention

The conditions that led to the recent North Bay fires – hot weather, low humidity, strong winds and lots of fuel, including trees stressed by years of drought – could occur here, Menlo Park Fire Protection District officials warn.

“The wind really created the devastation in the North Bay,” Deputy Chief Don Long said at the Dec. 12 annual joint meeting of the board of the Menlo Park Fire Protection District and the Atherton City Council.

He showed photos of the air filled with wind-blown embers that he said behaved like “throwing thousands of matches horizontally.”

Many fires burned so hot, the radiant heat ignited neighboring structures. “There’s nothing firefighters can do” in such conditions, he said.

Even a Santa Rosa fire station, upgraded and renovated just two years ago, and equipped with fire sprinklers, was destroyed in the fires.

“The question is, could this happen here?” said Deputy Chief Long.

While the Peninsula is known for its mild climate, it is not unknown to have hot and dry conditions and high winds, he said. “We could easily see something like this,” he said.

The fire district has robust resources including an automatic aid agreement with the rest of San Mateo County to dispatch additional fire resources without them even being requested, he said.

In West Atherton, the most rural part of the town, the fire district has an agreement with CalFire to supply aircraft, helicopters, bulldozers and hand crews if a wildfire breaks out, he said.

Fire Marshal Jon Johnston said much of the state shares some of the problems that caused recent fires. “We have an increase of building in the wildland zones,” he said. “We have people living where they never lived before.”

Making the problem worse, the fire marshal said, is the fact that California is “meant to burn.” Historically, fires regularly burned California’s wildlands, clearing out the low-growing plants and fallen vegetation and acting as “nature’s broom,” Fire Marshal Johnston said.

For the past 60 years, however, such fires have been prevented or quickly extinguished, he said. That allows low-growing and fallen vegetation to form a “ladder” for fire to reach into the tree canopy, he said.

The other problem is the “it won’t happen here mentality,” he said, that leaves places without a recent fire believing they will never have one. Santa Rosa, he said, hadn’t had a significant fire for 60 years.

“Our mentality needs to change,” Fire Marshal Johnston said. “We need to change that thinking.”

One step, he said, is to look at existing building codes written for areas at high risk for fire, and adopting some of their requirements.

Fire district Chief Harold Schapelhouman said the heavy vegetation in Atherton is “a risk” that has grown greater over the years. The town may need to find ways to encourage the “thinning” of its tree canopy, especially of non-native trees such as eucalyptus. “Those are things we need to look at, he said.

Fire board President Peter Carpenter suggested Atherton also supply residents with information on actions that aren’t required, but could make a home and property more fire safe. “If we could give people specs for best practices … they can make decisions on whether they want to do it,” he said.

Atherton Councilman Rick DeGolia said the town would appreciate such information. “I think we would really welcome suggestions from you” regarding beefing up building codes, and best practices for fire safe construction, he said.

Fire board member Chuck Bernstein said the fire district also needs better warning systems. In both the recent San Jose floods and the North Bay fires, many residents received no warnings. “People died as a result of it,” he said. “We need a good, low-tech auditory warning system.”

The fire district has another idea of how the communities it serves can better prepare for fires and other disasters. Division Chief Jim Stevens said he plans to get officials from Menlo Park, Atherton, East Palo Alto and San Mateo County together in January to form an intergovernmental disaster services committee.

While what the committee would do is to be determined, Division Chief Stevens said he hopes the group would “get each of the agencies responsible for emergency response at the table” to develop common plans and resources for disaster preparation and response. “We would develop the program together. It would be a collaboration,” he said.

Tom Prussing, chair of the Atherton Disaster and Preparedness Team (ADAPT), said the group has already been addressing some of the issues brought up by the fire district. ADAPT has been working on evacuation routes for Atherton neighborhoods, and planning how people could get out if roads are blocked. “We discussed how to survive if you can’t get out,” he said.

Other issues the citizens’ group has looked at are how Atherton’s heavy tree cover affects fire safety and the role the group can play after a disaster in gathering information for public officials “so that we can best take care of the community,” he said.

Atherton Mayor Mike Lempres said he looks forward “to following up on this meeting.”

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