Dragon in the Land:

People and Mega-fire in California

• Episode One:
  Lightning and Smoke
• Episode Two:
  Remembrance of Fires Past
• Episode Three:
  Red Ball Sun
• Episode Four:
  The Running Battle
• Episode Five:
  Evacuations and Destinations
• Episode Six:
  Maze of Chaos
• Episode Seven:
  The Dragon in the West Village
• Episode Eight:
  Fire Camp
• Episode Nine:
  Man-dragon
• Episode Ten:
  Percent Contained
• Episode Eleven:
  Smart Work, Dumb Luck
• Episode Twelve:
  What To Do Before The Nightmare Comes True — Again

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Writing

Dragon in the Land:
People and Mega-fire in California

by Howard V. Hendrix

Episode Twelve:
What To Do Before The Nightmare Comes True—Again

Pete Shaw listens on the radio as the Governor takes the microphone to address a special joint session of the California legislature in the wake of the reccent wildfire events. He is only able to give the Governor half his attention as he, his brother Joe, and his son Billy help Pete frame up the replacement for the section of his house that burned.

Loading a strip of nails into his nail gun, Pete thinks that things could always have been worse. At every level.

Only a third of his home burned – the addition put on the place by a previous owner, and separated from the rest of the house by a set of sliding glass doors. The majority of the house is salvageable and will not need to be rebuilt.

He supposes he should be happy. Instead, he wants to kick himself. If he had just taken care of a couple of very small things, he wouldn’t have to be putting forth the time, money, and labor to rebuild this section of his home.

His fault. When he was clearing patio furniture off the deck that evening of the dry lightning storm, just prior to the evacuation, he neglected to remove a smallish, furry, ring–shaped catbed that sat on a metal meshwork patio chair. Mary had placed that cat bed out on the chair over a year earlier, to make a comfortable resting spot for the semi–wild outdoor feline that visited them, now and again.

He overlooked the cat bed because the patio chair on which it sat was shoved up beneath a metal meshwork patio table. From that table a closed shade umbrella protruded. When embers from a flaming tree a hundred yards upwind landed on that overlooked cat bed, the furry ring was quickly transformed into a very receptive fuel bed.

Flaring up, the little blaze caught the closed patio umbrella on fire. Flame laddered up the umbrella to the eaves of the house, which in turn were open, not boxed in. Eventually, the fire from the burning eaves made its way into an attic vent, and the addition the previous owner put on the place became thoroughly involved in flame.

His mistake and ill–luck were at least balanced somewhat by the good fortune that the fire in the addition had not spread significantly to the rest of their house. That was the scenario the fire inspector from the insurance company gave him, anyway. For want of a nail, the shoe was lost. For want of a shoe, the horse was lost. . . .

Popping in nails with the nail gun and continuing to half–listen to the Governor’s speech on the radio, he realizes that much has been lost, but by no means all. Not in his case, not in Fresno County’s case, not in California’s case.

The Governor is giving the statistics now. The majority of the state’s 900,000 evacuees and four hundred and twenty two wildfire–related deaths took place in the south (San Diego, Orange, Los Angeles, Riverside, and San Bernardino Counties) and in the north (Yuba, Nevada, Placer, Sacramento, El Dorado, Amador, and Calaveras Counties). Pete knows that Fresno County has gotten off relatively lightly: four firefighter deaths and eleven civilian casualties.

The families and friends who lost loved ones might – understandably — not consider that loss to be “getting off lightly.”

Pete pauses from his stud–nailing at the Governor’s mention of the “dragon in the land.” In the two weeks since he and his grandson Will first saw that image from orbit of California on fire, it’s become clear that Will was not the only one to whom that shape of fire resembled a dragon. That image has become emblematic of the entire disaster the dry–lightning storm set in motion.

“The dragon of disastrous wildfire no longer flies above California!” the Governor declares, to the prolonged applause of the assembled legislators. “True, in a few backcountry places far from human habitation, the dragon still staggers along, dying. We have defeated it for now, but we know it will come again. We must take steps now if we hope to prevent the nightmare we have just lived through from coming true – again.”

Pete rejoins Joe and Billy at their nailing as the Governor lays out his plan. Better co–ordination among local, state, and federal agencies. More funding for fire, law enforcement, and emergency services in fire–prone areas – based on need and not just population. Better coordination between the state and insurance companies. . . .

“If we had that already,” Billy says, “maybe we could be working on Tom and Jen’s place already, and not just yours, Pop.”

Pete nods. Tom and Jen’s efforts to rebuild their place have becomed trapped in a maze of insurance company red tape. The big insurers are trying to protect their bottom–lines – an understandable but not a particularly popular position to be in, just now. Tom figures it might be a couple more months before they can start to rebuild.

On the radio, the Governor is continuing to lay out his plann. Stricter enforcement of property–clearing and defensible–space ordinances. Removal of dead plant material and reduction of ladder fuels through the use of handcrews, mechanical mastication, the controlled use of low–intensity fire, the targeted reintroduction of logging and timber sales. . . .

“That’ll be a hard sell for the environmentalists,” Billy says.

“Well, the environmentalists have their reasons,” Joe Shaw says. “They remember all the clear–cutting that took place under the Forest Service in the seventies and eighties, before the agency’s mission changed. Nobody with any foresight wants that kind of boardfeet blitzkrieg to happen again. But it’s no good being a prisoner of hindsight, either. The whole idea of ‘touch no tree for money’ just isn’t practical, especially with the forests as brushy and overgrown as they are, from a century of fire suppression.”

“’Practical’ is going to be the problem,” Pete says. “Aren’t the big trees the ones you want to keep and not cut down – but aren’t they also the most profitable ones to cut down?”

“That’s right, generally,” Joe says. “For hazard fuel reduction you have to go after the brush and the smaller and more spindly trees – the stuff least interesting to loggers.”

“So logging’s a non–starter?” Billy asks.

“Not at all. Without logging at least some larger trees, there’s just not enough money available to return the forests to what they were – before fire suppression, much less before European contact. You also have to take some larger trees to insure proper forest diversity, spacing, canopy breaks, age–class mix. The proceeds from the sale of those relatively few larger trees could be used to offset the cost of removing the brushy and spindly stuff.”

“Then it’ll pay for itself?” Pete asks.

“I don’t know. I’m not a logger or a forest ecologist – just a volunteer firefighter. Maybe it’ll take grants and subsidies to make it all work. Probably creative compromises and lots of careful oversight too, but logging will have to be some part of the solution.”

Pete nods and goes back to nailing. In his speech, the Governor has now gone on to talk about more innovative approaches to conditions in the wildland–urban interface and intermix. Stricter zoning controls, based around issues of sustainable water sourcing, fire safety, traffic, building codes, and environmental quality. Expansion of defensible space to one hundred fifty feet around some homes. More fire hydrants. Better signage and road turnouts. More fuel breaks, and better maintenance of those fuel breaks once established.

Even the enlistment of “animal allies” such as goats for the maintenance of those fuel breaks and reduction of potential hazard fuels on the land. Pete’s ears perk up when he hears the Governor begin talking about a story he already knows from the local media – the story of Dave Cheney’s Fire–Fighting Goats.

“Hey,” Billy says, “I know Dave! He lives in Pine Ridge.”

Pete nods. The Governor talks about portable lightweight fencing as the “enabling technology” for the modern goatherder. He tells the story of Cheney and his goats working a small hollow near Tollhouse as a part of a fuelbreak cleanup, when the firefront came toward them. Unable to get the goats out in time, Cheney waited out the fire, trusting that the work he and the goats had done already cleared out the fuelbreak enough to allow them to survive the blaze. Cheney and goats had come through their trial by fire unharmed – and proven once again the value of animal–asssisted fuelbreak maintenance.

“Having the Governor talk about it should help Dave’s business,” Billy says.

“No doubt,” says Pete, nailing. The Governor is finishing up, laying out a grand vision of a more fire–safe future for California.

“Such a vision can only be achieved if individual citizens take responsibility for their homes and property,” the Governor says. “Government at all levels and private enterprises of all sizes can help, but that will not be enough. The unintended consequences of suppressing smaller, natural fires over the past century have been the conditions which contribute to these catastrophically intense and unnatural wildfires we now face. If we want to live in or even simply enjoy wildland, we must take steps now toward returning that wildland to better balance. If you live in wildland, the primary responsibility for protecting your own home is yours – not governments or companies or anyone else. Only through the efforts of all Californians can we realize the dream of a more fire–safe California – rather than the nightmare of a burned–over one. All of us must work, separately and together, to keep the dragon in the land at bay.”

As the Governor’s speech ends and the legislators explode into applause, Pete wonders. Memory is short. People forget. Will governments, companies, organizations, and individuals still be so fired up about preventing wildfire five years from now? Ten? Or will enacting real change require yet more disasters?

Whether his fellow Californians will remember and learn from what has happened Pete can’t say, but he hopes that at least he and his family have. He goes back to nailing and hammering.

###

 

All episodes were originally published in 2007 as a fire education series in the Mountain Press, the Sanger Herald, the Snowline Tiimes, and their sister publications covering the central California portion of the foothills and Sierra Nevada Mountains.

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