Brad Graevs of the Plumas Underburn Cooperative uses a drip torch to set fire to vegetation in Humboldt County as part of a controlled fire in June organized by the Humboldt County Prescribed Fire Association. Photo/Lenya Quinn-Davidson
Controlled burning has proven effective at reducing wildfire risks, but a lack of insurance has dissuaded private landowners from implementing the practice. Policy expert Michael Wara discusses soon-to-be-enacted legislation that would pay for fire damages to neighboring properties in California.
September 27, 2022 – By Rob Jordan,Stanford Woods Institute for the Environmen – Ironically, after California’s deadliest and most destructive wildfire season ever – in 2018 – insurance companies stopped providing coverage for one of the most promising ways to prevent such catastrophes.
To slow the scourge of wildfires, California needs controlled or prescribed burning of tinder-dry trees and brush known to fuel runaway wildfires – or vegetation thinning on about 20 million acres or nearly 20% of the state’s land area. Although more than 50% of the state’s land belongs to private owners, they have largely avoided prescribed burning in part due to fears of bankruptcy, according to previous Stanford University research. To assuage those fears, Stanford legal research scholar Michael Wara, in partnership with The Nature Conservancy and University of California Agriculture and Natural Resources fire advisors, assisted California state Sen. Bill Dodd in the development of legislation that would implement a $20 million fund to pay for prescribed fire damages to neighboring properties through 2028. The bill – SB 926 – received almost unanimous support from the state legislature, and awaits Gov. Gavin Newsom’s signature before it is finalized.
Below, Wara, director of the Climate and Energy Policy Program at the Stanford Woods Institute for the Environment, discusses how to restart the insurance market for prescribed burning on private land, dispel misconceptions about the practice, and surmount related obstacles.
This past April, mistakes in a routine U.S. Forest Service prescribed burn led to New Mexico’s largest wildfire ever. What impact will that have on prescribed burning in California going forward?
CalFire – the California Department of Forestry and Fire Protection – is a bit more anxious about prescribed fire than perhaps they were before New Mexico. But there are many different flavors of prescribed fire. SB 926 helps private landowners with smaller fires than what escaped in New Mexico. That fire was supposed to be 2,500 acres. Most prescribed burns on private land are about 10 acres, so there’s a lot less potential for damage. But there are far more of them conducted – more than 400 over the past few years – than is typical for the forest service.
Is the insurance industry’s risk aversion for prescribed burnings justified?
Based on our analysis over the past three years, only two out of 400 prescribed burns on private property in California have escaped. And when you say “escaped,” it doesn’t necessarily mean damages. They burned a little more than planned. A cattle grate was damaged in one case. The risk is really low, at least as far as we can tell from the actual data. CalFire has had two escapes in the past three years that did more damage and required more attention, but again, that’s a different beast from burns on private property.
What can be done to encourage insurers to issue policies for prescribed burn coverage?
Writing or issuing commercial fire insurance and reinsurance is not how you get promoted in the insurance industry. We need to change that. Lenya Quinn-Davidson of University of California Agriculture and Natural Resources and I are trying to build a much more comprehensive assessment of what the risk actually is. Bringing insurers into the market requires actuarial analysis. We want to replace preconceived notions and fears with data. Maybe you won’t sell me an insurance policy that covers that first loss, but maybe you would sell me one that covers loss above some very high deductible – maybe $2 million – because those losses are unlikely to occur.
Is a $20 million liability fund that only covers private land enough to make a dent in the massive amount of prescribed burning California needs to do?
This bill is a pilot. It’s intended to see what happens, see what we can learn. This is a targeted, surgical intervention to help a particular set of people who we think could play an important role in reducing risk. I think of them as the Good Samaritans of fire. They are going out on their weekends, getting paid nominal money if anything, and working to make their communities safer. How to better manage private lands for fire risk in California is a huge issue. The odds these parcels are important go up as you get closer to communities. A lot of this is aimed at protecting small-town California. These places where there’s a lot of risk, you’ve also got lots of private landowners.
Some people are concerned by the prospect of frequent, purposefully set fires. What can be done to reassure them?
The way public opinion on prescribed fire changes is with engagement. Community meetings, personal experience, and accurate depictions in trusted media are key. In general, when that kind of work is done, there’s tremendous support. This bill will make it easier to have more of those interactions. Financial support for prescribed fire work is available; the real challenge now is these liability issues.
How do Native tribes that have done controlled burning for millennia figure into this?
Work remains to be done figuring out how to incorporate cultural burning into a claims fund process – it’s an unfinished aspect of this pilot. I would hope before we move toward a permanent solution, we solve that problem. And this is one of the things our Smoke Policy Lab will be working on this year, in partnership with the Karuk Tribe Department of Natural Resources. (Read more about the policy lab.)
What other major obstacles to prescribed burning remain? How can we overcome them?
The real limiter for doing prescribed burning in California is having trained personnel available and having backup units available. If CalFire doesn’t have resources to stand by, a burn won’t happen. If we’re going to change the fire ecology of the state – which is really what we need to do to keep communities safe – we need to train an army of people. It implies a huge investment in rural California and lots of jobs. We need as much emphasis on good fire as we currently have on fire suppression.
Why should Californians who don’t live near wildfire-prone areas care about this bill?
Anybody that lives in L.A. or the Bay Area or the San Joaquin or Central Valley over the past five years has experienced terrible air quality. Stanford scholarship from Kari Nadeau, Mary Prunicki, Marshall Burke, and Sam Heft-Neal has made this point in many different ways. Prescribed fire makes a little bit of smoke to avoid a very large volume of smoke. You can choose the day and weather conditions so the smoke doesn’t expose people in communities downwind. While our understanding of the impacts of wildfire smoke is developing rapidly, the more we are learning, the more serious the threat to public health seems to be.
Wara is also interim policy director for the Sustainability Accelerator at the Stanford Doerr School of Sustainability.
Source: Stanford
Do your part to prevent human caused wildfire: Part 5
September 26, 2022 – By Michele Nowak-Sharkey, UC Master Gardener of Mariposa County – The largest natural cause of fire is lighting. However, most fires are human caused. The percentage varies from 89% – 95% depending on the source. With the increase in drought, fuel build-up in unburned forests, earlier springs, higher temperatures, beetle infested weakened trees, with the addition of a bit of wind and the same actions that might have easily extinguished a small fire in the past are now creating dangerous infernos.
Being aware of our everyday choices can impact the number and magnitude of fires in the future.
(https://www.nifc.gov/fire-information/fire-prevention-education-mitigation/wildfire-investigation)
Debris and open burning include burn piles, yard debris, burn barrels, ditch/fence line burning, pest control, open trash burning, burning personal items, distress/signal fires, land clearing, right-of-way hazard reduction, or other escaped controlled burning. Windblown embers or fire creeping from the control burn area into un-cleared vegetation are the primary ignition mechanisms.
How to prevent: Landscape debris piles must be in 4 feet by 4 feet piles. Clear all flammable material and vegetation within 10 feet of the outer edge of pile.
Keep a water supply and shovel close by.
A responsible adult is required by law to be in attendance until the fire is out.
Stay mindful of current weather conditions when burning. If it’s windy and the surrounding vegetation is very dry, it may be best to wait and burn another day.
Check Mariposa County for burn permit requirements. 209 966-1200. (https://cemariposa.ucanr.edu/Fire_Information/Permits_and_Regulations/Mariposa_County_Permitting)
Arson is the criminal act of deliberately or maliciously setting fire to property including public lands with the intent to damage or defraud. Devices and “hot sets” are commonly used to ignite fires.
How to prevent: If you see or know of unusual activity in an area where wildfires are occurring, report it immediately. Note descriptions of vehicles and people in the area including dates, times, and location. Photos and videos are extremely helpful!
Equipment/Vehicle fires range from heavy construction to small portable engines (passenger vehicles/RVs, motorcycles, OHV, ATV, trailers, road graders, bulldozers, tractor trailers, welders, grinders, wind generators, chain saws, pumps, generators, etc.).
Ignitions sources are mechanical breakdowns/malfunctions such as exhaust (direct heat transfer, organic material collecting on the exhaust system, and particles), catalytic converter pieces, hot metal fragments, metal/pavement contact (dragging trailer chains and metal parts), friction, flat tires, spark arrestor malfunctions, faulty electrical system/wiring, collisions, refueling operations, and rock/hard surface strikes.
How to Prevent: Perform regular maintenance on your vehicles – secure chains, inspect for dragging parts, check tire pressure, and properly maintain brakes. Visit Ready for Wildfire equipment use for more prevention tips. (https://www.readyforwildfire.org/prevent-wildfire/equipment-use)
Firearms and explosives use requires being aware of any firearm projectiles along with flares from flare guns and signal flares.
How to Prevent: Explosives, exploding targets, incendiary ammunition and tracer bullets are prohibited on public lands during high fire danger. Check for fire restrictions and prohibited uses in the area. To prevent wildfires while target shooting, follow these tips:
Bring a shovel and water or fire extinguisher.
Place your targets on dirt or gravel, clear and away from grass and other vegetation.
If fire danger is high (dry, hot, and windy) consider shooting at an established outdoor or indoor range.
Know your ammunition – don’t shoot steel component, tracer, or incendiary bullets.
Bullets can spark when striking solid objects, sending hot fragments into vegetation – don’t shoot trash like TVs and appliances or at rocks and metal targets such as signs.
Fireworks burn at extremely elevated temperatures making all fireworks ignition sources especially the airborne type (i.e., bottle rockets and roman candles). Even sparklers burn at 1200°F.
How to prevent: Despite the dangers of fireworks, few people understand the associated risks – devastating burns, other injuries, fires, and even death. During times of high fire danger, federal and local agencies impose fire restrictions and/or fire prevention orders.
Misuse of fire by minors has its own category. Young children, ages 12 or younger, motivated by normal curiosity may use fire in an experimental fashion; “playing with matches.” They look for easily accessible ignition devices and frequently use both paper and wood matches, lighters, fireworks, or magnifying glasses to ignite fires.
How to prevent: Set a good example and teach children fire safety at an early age. The most critical message for children to learn is that matches, and lighters are tools and not toys! Parents should never use lighters, matches and fire for fun – children will mimic the behavior,
Power line caused wildfires are often due to high winds, contact with vegetation, equipment failure, or human or animal contact with a power line (conductor wire). Several of these factors may work to cause a fire, such as wind blowing vegetation into contact with the electrical equipment.
How to prevent: Proper maintenance including vegetation clearance around equipment can help prevent wildfires. For your safety, however, stay away from power lines, meters, transformers, and electrical boxes. Leave the maintenance to the professionals – if you see vegetation close or in contact with power lines or bird nest close to the lines or conductor boxes, notify your utility company.
Recreation and ceremony include campfires improperly constructed, unattended, improperly extinguished, or abandoned; barbeque/smokers; bonfires; ceremonial fires; gas cookers, warming and lighting devices; luminary (sky lanterns); and outdoor fireplaces, metal fire rings and candles.
How to Prevent: Learn how to construct a proper campfire and how to put it out. (https://smokeybear.com/en/prevention-how-tos/campfire-safety) Never leave grills and smokers unattended. Watch weather conditions closely when considering have a bonfire, ceremonial fire or using candles.
Smoking fires are generated from discarded unextinguished cigarettes and other materials used for smoking. Wildfires caused by smoking activities or accoutrements, include matches, cigarettes, cigars, pipes, electronic cigarettes (vape heads), and drug paraphernalia.
How to Prevent: Never flick cigarette butts out the window. Watch where you toss used matches and other smoking accoutrements. Beware of wind conditions when using such paraphernalia.
We want to get back to fire as a beneficial effect on the landscape rather than a damaging effect.
As Smokey says “Only YOU can help prevent wildfires” by our personal actions and the actions we take as a community.
Next Up: Defensible Space and How to Create It
Related:
Over the Garden Fence – The Partnership Between Humans and Nature During Fire Recovery: Part 4
Over the Garden Fence – The Partnership Between Humans and Nature During Fire Recovery: Part 3
Over the Garden Fence – The Partnership Between Humans and Nature During Fire Recovery: Part 2
Over the Garden Fence – The Partnership Between Humans and Nature During Fire Recovery
For assistance, contact our Helpline at (209) 966-7078 or at mgmariposa@ucdavis.edu. We are currently unable to take samples or meet with you in person but welcome pictures.
The U.C. Master Gardener Helpline is staffed; Tuesdays from 9:00 A.M. – 12:00 P.M. and Thursdays from 2:00 P.M. – 5:00 P.M.
Clients may bring samples to the Agricultural Extension Office located at the Mariposa Fairgrounds, but the Master Gardener office is not open to the public. We will not be doing home visits this year due to UCANR restrictions.
Serving Mariposa County, including Greeley Hill, Coulterville, and Don Pedro
Please contact the helpline, or leave a message by phone at: (209) 966-7078
By email (send photos and questions for researched answers) to: mgmariposa@ucdavis.edu
For further gardening information and event announcements, please visit: UCMG website: https://cemariposa.ucanr.edu/Master_Gardener
Follow us on Facebook at: https://www.facebook.com/mariposamastergardeners
Master Gardener Office Location:
UC Cooperative Extension Office,
5009 Fairgrounds Road
Mariposa, CA 95338
Phone: (209) 966-2417
Email: mgmariposa@ucdavis.edu
Website: http://cemariposa.ucanr.edu/Master_Gardener
Visit the YouTube channel at UCCE Mariposa.
Give Trees a Chance-Ecosystem Resilience
September 13, 2022 – By Michele Nowak-Sharkey, UC Master Gardener of Mariposa County – The impulse after a fire is to remove all evidence that the event occurred. This is understandable from an emotional perspective, however if we shift to the nature lens, we see a different approach.
Although the landscape looks blackened with no visible signs of life, life nonetheless is rearranging, communicating, and developing a plan as it shakes off the fire trauma.
Trees have a huge impact on ecosystem recovery. Trees contribute by providing oxygen, improving air quality, climate amelioration, conserving water, preserving soil, and supporting wildlife. To say nothing of the joy we humans experience when we interact with our leafed friends through recreation, food gathering or simply viewing.
Structurally unsound trees that threaten buildings and roads need to be felled. However, it is advised to wait 1- 3 years after a fire to determine if a tree will recover, especially larger, more valuable trees. In wildfire recovery, we need to Give Trees A Chance.
Identify: Know your trees. Mariposa County has a diverse mix of pine species, oak varieties, plus firs, manzanita, buckeyes, sycamores and more.
Knowing tree types supplies information about their coping mechanisms with fire, possibility of when they will bring on new leaves/needles, if they will re-sprout from the crown/base of the tree or have seeds that will sprout following a fire.
Other factors that impact tree survival include growth stage at the time of fire, how close together trees were, the chemical and physical characteristics – oil/wax content, vegetation underneath, the season and drought conditions.
Sources for tree identification: http://bit.ly/ucanroaks & https://www.calflora.org. There are also phone apps that can assist too.
Appraise: Leaf/needle scorch, root/trunk/branch damage, cambium (the inner layer between the bark and the wood) injury and bud death are signs of fire damage. These factors alone don’t indicate a tree is dead. A tree with blackened bark might look unsavable. The Ponderosa pine, as it matures, develops a thicker bark that is more fire-resistant. If the bark hasn’t been completely burned off the trunk, exposing the cambium, the tree may survive.
With blackened trees cut a quarter-sized piece, one-half inch through the bark. If you see a green or white moist cambial layer right below the bark, the tree will probably recuperate. Check burned branches- peel back a bit of bark. If there is a thin white/green layer those twigs/branches may be alive.
Look for burned roots around the base and several feet away. Roots are 6-8 inches below the surface. Gently unearth roots in a few locations. If they are supple, not
brittle/dried out, survival is good. If 50% of the roots are burned, the tree is unstable.
Burned leaves/needles might be attached to a live tree. New leaves may sprout from the crown/base of the tree. As witnessed in this picture of an oak from the Telegraph fire, the leaves over most of the tree were scorched but within a year, new green leaves sprouted.
Telegraph Fire 2008 – photo credit, Kris Randal (pictured right)
It is important to look for buds. If they are green and moist, not dry, and brittle or twigs bend easily, survival is good.
https://anrcatalog.uncanr.edu Publication 8386
https://anrcatalog.ucdavis.edu Publication 8445
https://cemariposa.ucanr.edu/Fire_Information/Post-fire_Restoration/Landscape_Restoration_685
Support: Water trees once the scorched crust layer on soil is cared for. Slowly soak the entire area under the dripline and beyond a few feet to a depth of 12 inches. Do not water the trunk just the surrounding area. Check trees weekly. Water when the soil dries to 6 inches deep.
Protect trunks and large limbs from sunburn until leaf/needles regrow. Loosely wrap in permeable light-colored cloth or cardboard. During fall, prune dead, broken limbs.
https://naes.agnt.unr.edu/PMS/Pubs/1510_2004_96.pdf
Watch: Kris Randal, UC Master Gardener, CA Naturalist/Oak Specialist says dead trees have value too! More than 80 species of birds rely on dead trees for nesting and food. Acorn woodpeckers establish large granaries in dead oaks and conifers. Insects, fungi and more than 300 different types of wildlife rely on dead trees also. Consider leaving a few standing dead trees if they don’t present a hazard.
Spend the first year after fire watching as life surfaces once more. Be a patient partner, give trees AND nature a chance.
Next: To Seed or Not to Seed
Related:
Over the Garden Fence – The Partnership Between Humans and Nature During Fire Recovery: Part 2
Over the Garden Fence – The Partnership Between Humans and Nature During Fire Recovery
For assistance, contact our Helpline at (209) 966-7078 or at mgmariposa@ucdavis.edu. We are currently unable to take samples or meet with you in person but welcome pictures.
The U.C. Master Gardener Helpline is staffed; Tuesdays from 9:00 A.M. – 12:00 P.M. and Thursdays from 2:00 P.M. – 5:00 P.M.
Clients may bring samples to the Agricultural Extension Office located at the Mariposa Fairgrounds, but the Master Gardener office is not open to the public. We will not be doing home visits this year due to UCANR restrictions.
Serving Mariposa County, including Greeley Hill, Coulterville, and Don Pedro
Please contact the helpline, or leave a message by phone at: (209) 966-7078
By email (send photos and questions for researched answers) to: mgmariposa@ucdavis.edu
For further gardening information and event announcements, please visit: UCMG website: https://cemariposa.ucanr.edu/Master_Gardener
Follow us on Facebook at: https://www.facebook.com/mariposamastergardeners
Master Gardener Office Location:
UC Cooperative Extension Office,
5009 Fairgrounds Road
Mariposa, CA 95338
Phone: (209) 966-2417
Email: mgmariposa@ucdavis.edu
Website: http://cemariposa.ucanr.edu/Master_Gardener
Visit the YouTube channel at UCCE Mariposa.
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