Colleen Cason: Burning issues fire up residents
These days, I’m feeling the burn. And not Bernie Sanders’ style of scorch.
At a recent debate, Democratic presidential hopeful and Ohio Congressman Tim Ryan told the riled, red-faced Vermont independent “You don’t have to yell.”
Sometimes, though, nothing happens until the shoutin’ starts. And here we are, almost two years after the Thomas Fire tore through Ventura County, killing two people, burning alive wildlife and livestock and destroying some 500 homes in Ventura alone and are we any safer, really?
As we head into peak fire season 2019, what lessons from Thomas can residents across this county and the whole of California use to protect themselves from another monster blaze? And why is it critical to get information quickly?
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Because … the Woolsey Fire. Erupting less than a year after Thomas on the opposite end of Ventura County, that inferno took three lives and reduced to ash nearly 1,650 structures.
These terrible twins underscore what we Californians fear to the core of our being, the next fire disaster is waiting out there — for a lit cigarette or joint, arsonists, erratic winds, our complacency.
On Dec. 4, 2017, residents armed themselves with hoses and turned on sprinklers trying to save their homes from the Thomas firestorm borne on the Santa Anas and barreling toward them at freeway speed. Then suddenly hoses went limp and sprinklers sputtered. Why?
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Well, that’s the $2 billion question and one that has Ventura County Supervisor and Ventura resident Steve Bennett intent on getting answers. So intent, he filed suit as a private citizen against the city of Ventura — not for money but for something more precious: Information.
Information, I might add, that was compiled at public expense.
Ventura officials appear little inclined to invite much sunshine into what happened in the dead of that December night. In a report the city released more than 15 months after the fire, as reported in The Star, it stated the water system lost pressure, was eventually re-pressurized and “operated as designed.”
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Does that mean the devastation of 500-plus dwelling units and the potential loss of life that comes with that is within acceptable tolerances? When cities get sued, taxpayers get stuck with the tab.
To his credit, Bennett did try to obtain information through the California Public Records Act but city officials declared the documents he requested exempt from release under state statute.
Bennett and The Star have appealed that denial. The supervisor also negotiated with city officials for the records’ release.
Those officials refuse to comment on pending litigation, but Bennett told The Star the city had discussed potentially allowing him to examine the records if he promised not to make them public. No dice, he said, and lawyered up.
This is a complex issue, and I implore you to read The Star’s Aug. 13 piece on this vital topic. I have, however, been a reporter long enough to know one thing: Never attribute to malice what you can to incompetency.
The malice arises when there is a cover-up. And almost invariably, what is being covered up is someone’s incompetency.
And when it comes to a disaster of Thomas’ magnitude there is enough blame to go around. County authorities would do well to rethink their apparent hesitancy to use controlled or prescribed burns to lessen the fuel load that fed the inferno.
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Controlled burns that deplete stands of tinder-dry vegetation are good land-management science.
In Ventura County, we have one of the state’s brightest researchers, Matthew Shapero of the UC Cooperative Extension, performing experiments to fully understand this suppression technique.
His conclusion: Fires in shrub-dominated landscapes burn hotter. And yet, between January 2014 and May 2017, the Ventura County Fire Department torched only about 450 acres. That’s a third of what the state permitted, by the way.
As cattle rancher and controlled-burn advocate Rich Atmore points out, the permitted fires his operation set west of Arroyo Verde Park — near Two Trees — may have saved nearby homes from Thomas. Houses near Harmon Canyon, which had not burned since the 1970s and is no longer grazed, suffered severe damage.
Although I thought I’d never see the day cattleman Atmore and former Gov. Jerry Brown would be within shouting distance of the same page, they both support controlled burns to mitigate fire risk.
On his way out of office, Brown signed a bill granting $1 billion to Cal Fire and local agencies to encourage the use of supervised burns.
The most recent report by the Predictive Services National Interagency Fire Center suggests Southern California has a little breathing space as we enter the notorious fall fire season.
Chaparral is displaying moisture levels higher than normal. But change happens here in a red-hot hurry. Only armed with the information forged in the flames can we fight fire with fire.
Email Colleen Cason at casonpoint101@gmail.com.