Posted on 12/30/2007 9:19:35 AM PST by NormsRevenge
A few months before the October wildfires barreled though Rancho Bernardo, San Diego firefighters left notices throughout the neighborhood urging people to trim brush from the canyon rims near their homes.
But Fire-Rescue Department inspectors never followed up to make sure the job had been done. In fact, it had been years since the city of San Diego had sent fire marshals into the area to see that brush had been removed.
As residents of the North County neighborhood slept through the early-morning darkness of Oct. 22, the Witch Creek and Guejito fires were gaining momentum. At 5 a.m., whipped by 60-mph winds, they roared into Rancho Bernardo through the San Pasqual Valley and began climbing the sides of canyons toward the homes.
The flames barely touched the two-story house on Cloudesly Drive where Mark Coast and his family live. Coast had taken the firefighters' warning seriously and cleared a 100-foot barrier between his property and the canyon.
The house next door, however, became one of 365 destroyed in Rancho Bernardo that day. Fire shot through a thicket of brush growing just a few yards away.
Nobody can say for sure that the toll in Rancho Bernardo would have been lower if more brush had been cleared. What is certain is that for more than a decade, city officials had known that 16,000 acres of wild land in San Diego were so thick with brush that they had become a huge fire hazard.
Much of that wild land is nestled in the chain of canyons that stretches from rural areas into the heart of urban San Diego. The canyons provide breathtaking views of sometimes lush, sometimes scruffy ecosystems populated by native plants and animals.
But the vast expanse of scrub and trees also forms a fuel-laden pathway that could bring wild-land fires into densely populated neighborhoods such as San Carlos, North Park and Bay Terraces.
Maintaining the canyons has long bedeviled politicians, residents, environmentalists and those who study fire. Clear too much of the native vegetation and more flammable, non-native plants might move in. Clear too little and an important firefighting tool is eliminated.
For San Diego city officials, that dilemma has taken a back seat to a bigger problem: They don't have enough money to fund a comprehensive brush management program, just as they don't have enough money to repair city streets or replace older sewer pipes.
That was painfully clear in a city report issued three months after the October 2003 Cedar fire burned 321 homes in the San Diego communities of Scripps Ranch and Tierrasanta.
A deputy city manager told the City Council it would cost at least $4.4 million a year to adequately tackle the brush problem. That same year, voters rejected two initiatives that would have provided more money for fire engines, new stations and perhaps brush management.
In 2005, Jeff Bowman, then San Diego's fire chief, said the city needed to clear 590 acres each year, not 70 as it had been doing for more than a decade. But there was no money to expand the effort and little hope of finding the funds, he conceded.
(front end excerpt)
Norm few years ago my aunt decided clear brush on her own property did you know she got ticketed by San Diego fire dept
She is like type of person does anything if city won’t she does it cost her 500 bucks like 2002
I wish your aunt and others could sue ,, that is just crazy..
Unfortunately I don’t have a truck, I usually have people come here to get it.
We’ve got about another hundred oaks coming out in the neighborhood, and I’m going to get most of it. (I’m the only one with a splitter.) Buying a chipper next week to deal with all the slash. It’s amazing how it improves the look of the whole property.
(I burn a lot, too. A lot.)
In my neck of the woods, your sale of firewood qualifies you as a commercial enterprise requiring a Timber Harvest Plan.
County government is not constitutionally required to provide fire services. In the unicorporated areas outside of cities, those services are provided by self-taxing volunteer districts or purely volunteer organizations operated on bake sales and pancake breakfasts. California Forestry and Fire Protection (CDF) provides wildfire fighting service during fire service. The California Code gives them responsibility here for visiting homes and inspecting them for fire safe compliance.
I believe as of 2008, County building codes across the state will change to require building with fire safe materials and clearing parcels of hazards prior to building.
SevenofNine (post #21): "Norm few years ago my aunt decided clear brush on her own property did you know she got ticketed by San Diego fire dept"
We could be wrong... **grin**
I know what you mean about the Timber Harvest Plan, but I don’t think what we’re doing is that major. Our real intention is to clear away some bothersome, threatening oaks on a steep hill next to our road. It hasn’t been done for years and they were getting out of control.
As far as selling the wood, about 70% of it ends up in our fireplaces. I only sell, sometimes give away, a few cords a month.
We do have good protection here from CDF, and they are intimately aware of our little dead end canyon. They love the awareness that the neighborhood has and are very helpful to us.
We’re in Sierra Madre, about 1/2 mile from the National Forest up here near Pasadena. SM has a VOLUNTEER fire department. We actually take care of our own yards without even being warned. I don’t know, something about forest fires that makes me think twice about overgrown bushes and weeds. Most of us are very careful.
It is wild out here in California. Winds, EQs, forest fires, wild surf, maniac drivers, Marxists in Sacto, homeless people getting condos in San Fran. Oh, and 73 degree weather today, in December. :)
Put your faith in the nanny state and get burned. Literally
Uhhh...The most ridiculous comment of the month, considering the property owners failed in their responsibility to take care of their own property. This absurd turn of events supports the view that idiot homeowners are not fit to be trusted with private property.
There have been numerous articles stating over 50% of the homes burned were due to flying embers into eaves and lack of bird stops on tile roofs.
Better check on those hazards too.
Got ‘em covered. I have a 2 acre greenbelt around my house, and the CDF loves it. Tile roof, lots of water sources everywhere. I feel more fire-safe this year than I ever have, just by getting rid of those nasty dead oaks.
Also, I’m in the Santa Cruz Coastal Mountains, and unlike So. Cal, we have lots and lots of native ferns and such growing in the forests. A lot more moist here.
I lived in Santa Barbara in my college years and very much remember the Santa Ana winds and the fires.
Cheers!
I happened to go by there this morning and saw the blackened hills. Here in L.A., the idiot environmentalists always scream and cry when they propose thinning the nearby forests. And then when a fire eventually breaks out, they are no where to be found. Instead, they criticize people for encroaching on the environment. So where are people supposed to live? At some point in the past, those environmentalists are living on land once owned by a gopher. P1ss on ‘em!
I used to split wood the old fashioned way,, used to .. a splitter is the only way to go,, I dread the day they outlaw burning it in silicon valley..
I’ve heard that over here when the fireplace ban starts, people like me in the mountains with no access to natural gas will be excempted from the ban. Fire is pretty much my only heat source.
I can still burn wood down here if that happens but need to get a good stove.. not cheap.. we’ll see soon enough, I’m afraid.
Good thing for the exemption tho, it makes sense for the hill folk that live up there in the big woods.
True, but there are still a lot of older development there and in Orange County whose owners never replaced the wood shake roofs with the fire-resistant “fake” ones.
I think that will come in 2008!
Got the sign in screen and I don’t have Bugmenot. Care to elaborate?
Article Launched: 11/30/2007 09:50:09 AM PST
GLENDALE, Calif.—The city of Glendale has rescinded a $347,600 fine imposed on a couple who pruned 13 trees around their home.
The FIRE DEPARTMENT suggested Michael and Ann Collard get the trees trimmed and the couple agreed.
But trimming the trees violated the city's indigenous tree law, which protects oaks, sycamores and bay laurels that are native to the area. Hefty fines were imposed because developers had been cutting down trees.
The city decided to back off after rancorous City Council meetings and talk radio ridicule in recent weeks. City Attorney Scott Howard says the city isn't seeking any civil or criminal penalties.
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