California Fire News

CA-LAC-Corral Incident - Vegetation Fire Posted: 24 Nov 2007 08:00 AM CST Location: Corral Canyon Road X Las Virgenes Canyon North of the PCH Sizeup: 100-acres w/with rapid rate of spread. Structures threat, Evacutations ordered Resources: 10 strike teams ordered immediate need

EDIS: RED FLAG WARNING - Napa County, Riverside County Posted: 24 Nov 2007 08:10 AM CST Updated: 06:06 PST on 2007-11-24 RED FLAG WARNING IN EFFECT UNTIL NOON PST THIS AFTERNOON Actual/Immediate/Severe/Observed NAPA COUNTY- Alert sent at 04:58 PST on 2007-11-24 RED FLAG WARNING REMAINS IN EFFECT UNTIL 5 PM MST /4 PM PST/ THIS AFTERNOON FOR THE LOWER COLORADO RIVER VALLEY... EASTERN RIVERSIDE COUNTY INCLUDING JOSHUA TREE NATIONAL PARK... AND IMPERIAL COUNTY DUE TO STRONG WINDS... LOW RELATIVE HUMIDITIES... AND HIGH FIRE DANGER Actual/Immediate/Severe/Observed ARIZONA FIRE WEATHER ZONE 131YUMA/MARTINEZ LAKE AND VICINITY/LOWER COLORADO RIVER VALLEY AZ-CALIFORNIA FIRE WEATHER ZONE 230JOSHUA TREE NATIONAL PARK-CALIFORNIA FIRE WEATHER ZONE 231LOWER COLORADO RIVER VALLEY CA-CALIFORNIA FIRE WEATHER ZONE 232IMPERIAL COUNTY AND EASTERN RIVERSIDE COUNTY- Update sent at 04:54 PST on 2007-11-24

A RED FLAG WARNING REMAINS IN EFFECT FROM 10 PM THIS EVENING TO 6 PM PST SATURDAY. Posted: 23 Nov 2007 03:48 PM CST A RED FLAG WARNING REMAINS IN EFFECT FROM 10 PM THIS EVENING TO 6 PM PST SATURDAY. GENERALLY THE WINDS DURING THIS EVENT WILL BE LESS WIDESPREAD... AND MAINLY IMPACT AREAS NEAR AND BELOW THE PASSES AND CANYONS. NORTHEAST WINDS 15 TO 25 MPH WITH GUSTS TO 40 MPH WILL DEVELOP THIS AFTERNOON. WINDS WILL STRENGTHEN TO 20 TO 30 MPH TONIGHT AND CONTINUE THROUGH SATURDAY MORNING WITH GUSTS TO 55 MPH THROUGH PASSES AND CANYONS. WINDS WILL SLOWLY DECREASE SATURDAY AFTERNOON. THE STRONGEST WINDS WILL OCCUR NEAR AND BELOW THE PASSES AND CANYONS LATE FRIDAY NIGHT THROUGH SATURDAY MORNING... WITH LOCAL GUSTS 40 TO 50 MPH. HUMIDITIES WILL FALL TO 20 TO 0 PERCENT TONIGHT AND BELOW 10 PERCENT SATURDAY. Instruction: A RED FLAG WARNING MEANS THAT CRITICAL FIRE WEATHER CONDITIONS ARE EXPECTED. A COMBINATION OF STRONG WINDS AND LOW RELATIVE HUMIDITY WILL BRING THE POTENTIAL FOR RAPID FIRE GROWTH. Area: ORANGE COUNTY COASTAL AREAS-SAN DIEGO COUNTY INLAND VALLEYS-SAN DIEGO COUNTY MOUNTAINS-INCLUDING THE PALOMAR AND DESCANSO RANGER DISTRICTS OF THECLEVELAND NATIONAL FOREST-

Firefighting Grants Support Wildfire Fight Posted: 23 Nov 2007 02:43 PM CST FEMA funding in California helps save property and lives Release Date: November 23, 2007 Release Number: 1731-046 » More FEMA Information on California Wildfires PASADENA, Calif. — Chief Frank Twohy and his firefighters helped hold back the recent Coronado Hills fire before it could jump into San Elijo Hills. But they weren't so fortunate several years ago. After the Harmony Fire claimed 13 square miles and 100 homes near San Diego in 1996, Chief Twohy of the Elfin Forest/Harmony Grove Volunteer Fire Department looked outside his district for guidance to avoid a repeat of that disaster. He found it close to home—and halfway around the world. Part of his help came in a grant from FEMA to design and build a demonstration fire-resistant garden. The Federal Emergency Management Agency funds fire management assistance, firefighter assistance, fire prevention and safety, and staffing for adequate fire and emergency response. The rest of Twohy's help came from a creative duo—landscape designers Greg Rubin of California and Yvette Anderson, who grew up in South Africa. Twohy knew that educating the public about fire-resistant zones around buildings could save as many homes as a legion of firefighters with brand new equipment. "I had a hunch that a fire-resistant, acre-and-a-half demonstration garden near our fire station might do the trick," said Twohy. "You know - if you build it, they will come—so we did build it, and they came." With FEMA financing, Rubin and Anderson did the heavy lifting; Rubin designed and Anderson maintains the fire-resistant landscape at the fire station. Their San Diego based landscape design firm has installed more than 400 landscapes featuring native California grasses, shrubs and trees. According to Anderson, who learned landscape principles early from her mom and grandmother, native plants can best handle drought and create a buffer to keep fire away from homes. "In Jamul, the Witch fire burnt an area 360 degrees around our client's house…but stopped in all directions at the garden," said Anderson. "Our goal is to protect the homes first. Although many of our clients' homes are exposed to fire, none has ever burnt." FEMA fire prevention grants have funded educational projects that have made a difference for other communities as well. Not far from Elfin Forest, the San Miguel Consolidated Fire Protection District covers 41 square miles in the eastern portion of urban San Diego County, serving the communities of Casa de Oro, Grossmont-Mt. Helix, La Presa, Rancho San Diego, Spring Valley, and unincorporated areas of El Cajon and La Mesa. San Miguel's 98 full-time employees provide suppression, prevention and emergency medical services to approximately 110,000 residents. "Our district is named for Mt. Miguel, which is dedicated to Saint Michael the Archangel—he beat the devil in the battle of heaven in the Bible," said Gary Croucher, administrative division chief of the San Miguel fire protection district. "We beat the recent wildfires and escaped without property damage because we have worked hard to educate our residents about firewise buffers around homes and businesses." With help from a FEMA grant after the deadly Cedar fire of 2003, the district studied its high hazard areas and put together plans and packages that enabled strike teams fighting the recent wildfires to quickly reach hazard areas and locate hydrants. Another FEMA grant in 2005 helped the district install a firewise landscape exhibit and conduct a community awareness campaign to emphasize clearances around buildings. More than 20,000 visitors have viewed the exhibit's fire-resistant building and planting materials installed at the Water Conservation Garden. An educational campaign by the fire district is providing brochures and advertising materials to all residents to create awareness of fire prevention techniques. Croucher says that recent fires would have claimed several homes if the district had not conducted its research and education campaigns. Not one home was damaged during the October wildfires that came through the district. No residents were harmed. Prevention programs like these show how Southern Californians can use plants that provide safety from fires, require low maintenance, little irrigation, and blend in with the natural environment. Visitors to the demonstration landscapes learn that a typical fire resistant buffer has three zones: Zone 1. Well-irrigated area extending at least 50 feet from structures, providing a defensible space. Trees and shrubs should be planted no closer than 15 feet from a building, with spreading branches at least 10 feet away from roofs or chimneys, spaced at least 30 feet apart at maturity, and pruned to remove all limbs within six feet of the ground. Shrubs should be less than 18 inches high. Limit plants to fire-resistant species. Examples of vegetation: Day lilies, Santa Barbara daisy, sea pink, star jasmine; Zone 2. Minimum 50 - 100 feet from structures. Plants should be low-growing, fire-resistant and irrigated. Trees and shrubs should be spaced at least 10 feet apart. Prune trees as for Zone 1. Examples of vegetation: Aeonium, agave, aloe, ice plant, jade plant, wild strawberries, mousehole tree, rockrose, coyote brush, beard-tongue, yarrow, California poppy; Zone 3. More than 100 feet from structures. This is a slightly modified natural area. Examples: coastal live oak, sycamore, California lilac. FEMA grants for firefighting assistance, firefighter safety, fire prevention and public education are available to states, local governments and tribal councils. After the October 2003 Southern California wildfire siege, FEMA provided almost $60 million to reimburse state and local government firefighting costs. From 2004 through 2006, FEMA's fire management assistance grants in California provided almost $100 million to reimburse state and local firefighting and emergency response costs to fight 35 wildfires.

CA-SBC- Turkey Incident - Smoking Turkey starts deck fire Posted: 23 Nov 2007 11:20 AM CST GOLETA - A smoking turkey starts a wooden deck fire in Goleta early Thanksgiving morning. Just before 5:00 a.m. on the 6500 block of Camino Venturoso, a man woke up to find his deck on fire. Santa Barbara County Fire responded to find a turkey smoker that dropped ashes onto cardboard sitting on the deck. Fire crews managed to save the home but the turkey was a complete loss. There were no injuries in the blaze. Thanksgiving is the number one day of the year for home structure fires. Editor - It was not known at press time what the Turkey was smoking... Source: KSBY

Inciweb: Socal Pre-positioning Efforts Posted: 23 Nov 2007 10:20 AM CST Forest Service in Brief - Socal Pre-positioning Efforts Incident Information Announcements News Photographs Maps Related Article Links Usfs in Brief 11/21/2007 (Doc 70 kb) Incident: Maffs Activation Released: 12 hrs. ago In Brief USDA Forest Service · Pacific Southwest Region · Southern California · November 2007 MAFFS Activation Modular Airborne Fire Fighting System (MAFFS) Southern California Pre-Positioning Efforts - November 21, 2007 BACKGROUND: MAFFS is a self-contained reusable 3,000-gallon aerial fluid dispersal system that allows Lockheed C-130 cargo/utility aircraft to be converted to wildland firefighting air tankers. The system has been used in the U.S., Europe, Africa, and Indonesia. The system is pneumatically powered and includes tank modules, a control module, and a dissemination module. Electrical power is provided by the aircraft or by a 24-volt battery on the control module. The MAFFS use is a joint program with the U.S. Air Force (USAF) Air National Guard, Air Force Reserve, and the U.S. Forest Service. The system was developed for installation in a Lockheed C-130 Hercules plane equipped with the USAF 463L cargo-handling-system. Crews using MAFFS can make variable drops over the fire, with flow rate pre-selected at the control module. At maximum flow rate, a MAFFS-equipped C-130 can discharge its entire load in under five seconds. Unlike a gravity system in which the aircraft's center of gravity moves aft as the retardant flows to the rear to exit, MAFFS discharges the retardant alternately from a series of tanks to keep the center of gravity within limits. MAFFS-equipped tankers can be re-loaded and flight-ready in less than eight minutes. The objective of the MAFFS program is to provide emergency capability to supplement the existing commercial air tanker support on wildfires. The National Interagency Coordination Center at Boise can activate the MAFFS when all other contract air tankers are committed to incidents or initial attack or are otherwise unable to meet requests for air operations. The request for MAFFS activation is approved by the national MAFFS liaison officer, who is the Forest Service director at NIFC. This request is then forwarded to the Joint director of military support at the Pentagon. Governors of states where National Guard MAFFS units are stationed may activate MAFFS for missions within their state boundaries when covered by a memorandum of understanding with the military authority and the Forest Service. Five tank modules store the retardant under pressure; each module contains a pressure tank where compressed air is stored at 1200 psi. The control module includes the master control panel, the loadmaster's seat, and discharge valves. An air compressor module provides air pressure for charging the system; it stays at the air tanker base during air operations and is used to recharge the system between runs. Each unit weighs about 11,000 pounds, with a load capacity of 3,000 gallons. The units are loaded with either water or retardant -- a chemical that inhibits the combustion potential of vegetation on the ground. The retardant contains a fertilizer, and promotes re-growth over the burned area. While water is sometimes dropped directly on a fire, retardant is laid out ahead of the fire or at its edges to inhibit or retard the fire's spread. This allows firefighters on the ground to rapidly take advantage of the retardant effect, which helps in line-building efforts. Its bright red or fuchsia color helps air tanker pilots observe the accuracy of their retardant drops on the edge of the fire. CURRENT SITUATION IN SOUTHERN CALIFORNIA In anticipation of forecasted Santa Ana winds, the Forest Service and CalFire have deployed additional firefighters, fire engines, and aircraft that will be ready to respond to any new fire as soon as it starts. In addition to the hundreds of Forest Service firefighters that are normally stationed in southern California at this time of year, the agency has assigned 124 additional fire engines, 8 additional fixed-wing air tankers, 15 additional helicopters, and 15 hand crews that are available for any new fire starts during the Santa Ana wind event. Additionally, the Air National Guard (153rd Airlift Wing - Cheyenne, WY) and Air Force Reserve (302nd Airlift Wing - Peterson AFB - Colorado Springs, CO) have responded to a request from the National Interagency Fire Center (NIFC) to deploy four C-130 aircrafts equipped with the MAFFS units. On Tuesday, November 20, the military aircraft arrived at the 146th Airlift Wing - Channel Islands Air National Guard Station in Port Hueneme and stand ready to quickly respond if needed. The MAFFS units effectively augment the civilian air tanker fleet. This posting includes an audio/video/photo media file: Download Now

News: Tracy hires its first full-time fire marshal, Jake Tomlin of Mountain House. Posted: 23 Nov 2007 09:31 AM CST Jake Tomlin took the seat as Tracy's first full-time fire marshal two weeks ago and says he's already set out to "vamp up the program." The 43-year-old Mountain House resident will concentrate his efforts on public education, enforce things such as weed abatement laws, and carry out most all inspections and plan reviews, instead of paying outside contractors as the city does now. "Once we have the staff, we can do inspections and plan reviews in-house," Tomlin said. He also wants to expand the fire department's education facet to teach more people, from kindergartners to seniors, how to prevent fires through classes on vacation checklists, safety in the workplace, disaster and terrorism preparedness and babysitting tips, among others. For the past few years, firefighters have taught fire safety to fourth-graders through its Learn not to Burn presentation. "I'd like us to do more," said Tomlin, who wants to also prod people who don't have working smoke detectors. "People are dying in homes more than in commercial buildings, so I hope to focus my efforts there." Fire department employees were rotating into the fire marshal position each year to cover the basics of fire prevention. After a review three years ago, an outside contractor suggested the fire department hire a fire marshal with an engineering background to focus on prevention. "Our city has grown so there's a greater need in the fire prevention program," Tracy division chief Andy Kellogg said. "Being from Mountain House, Jake understands the local issues. The learning curve for him is much smaller than someone from out of the area." Before he came to Tracy, Tomlin worked as a deputy fire marshal with the Santa Clara County Fire Department for three years. When he heard about the position he jumped at the chance to work close to home and alongside employees he'd heard good things about. Tomlin earned his bachelor's degree in fire protection with an emphasis on safety engineering and technology from Oklahoma State University, and previously worked for Stanford University, the University of California, Berkeley, and Ohio State University. The Isleton-native moved to Mountain House four years ago from Fremont because he missed the small-town atmosphere. He's watched the town swell from just a few homes in 2003 to nearly 6,000 residents today. Mountain House contracts its fire services out to Tracy's fire department. Tomlin and his wife of two months, Karla, 29, like to motorcycle, scuba dive, camp, fish and hunt. Source: Tracy Press

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