[00:00:02] Speaker A: Heimut Podcast presents.
[00:00:13] Speaker B: Hi Avi and hello to K Mode listeners. This is Fire Radio. It's a project of the Southern Humboldt Fire Safe Council and we have a guest tonight who is a private burn boss to talk about a number of different topics including prescribed fire permitting and potential operational delineations. Scott, thanks for joining us.
[00:00:39] Speaker A: Thanks Greg. Thanks Kay Mud for hosting.
[00:00:43] Speaker B: So Scott is a private burn boss and his business is called, he had to tell me how to pronounce this called Torchbear.
It's got two R's at the end and he's up in Soames bar. It's a 501C3 and maybe you could tell us more about what Torchbearer is.
[00:01:02] Speaker A: Scott yeah, since we have that double R on Torchbearer, I'll share with you the funny on it. After 120 years of fire suppression, the growl came from the disappointment of not putting more good fire on the ground. So that that grr is a frustration from our mascot.
But on a serious note, our non profit is governed by eight board members from all walks of life. National Park Service, Cal Fire Tribe, young, old. We have a pretty diverse group on our board and what Torchbearer does is is we we support communities and tribes and just the local landowners, timber owners, basically anybody that's wanting to put fire under their landscape.
We do a wide variety of things such as trainings for the communities. We we have community events, we bring in the young and old to participate or observe burns. We do the permitting, smoke management plans with air quality folks and then working with our partners of forest Service, Cal Fire or Fire safe Councils. What have you writing those burn plans, that's about what Torchbear does.
What we're trying to help is get this community based concept of burning without the fear of fire. And so Torchbearer is one of the few nonprofits that has the 2 million dollar claims fund liability and then an additional 2 million of private insured for prescribed fire. That way when we are in groups and we hear the word liability, we're bringing that to the table to assist and comfort some of those maybe adjacent landowners or even the landowner participants. So that's what we're doing across the landscape. We do a lot in other states, but primarily most in California and most of our work we try to focus in the northern and central California along our coastline.
[00:03:37] Speaker B: Well great Then the question that comes to mind is I've been on some prescribed burns and there's been a burn bus and I don't recall that there Was someone who was in the private capacity doing that. They were typically paid, but they weren't independent. They were usually a member of the local fire department. How is that really the only difference between you and one of those guys?
[00:04:02] Speaker A: Well, I come from 32 years in fire suppression, both on the state and federal side.
And most times, depending on jurisdiction, you may have a Cal Fire burn boss on a VMP or on a Cal Fire project. Or if it's federal land, you may have the Forest Service. If it's tribal land, you may have BLM or bia.
And so it really depends on the land. But there is no difference between myself and another burn boss thanks to the CAR RX program that was developed in 2021.
This is empowering not only myself, but landowners to get the knowledge and the liability to put good fire back on their lands and in ranches. So very excited about it.
[00:05:01] Speaker B: So you come to prescribe burn with yourself and you also have employees. Are they present on the burns as well or is that just an office job?
[00:05:12] Speaker A: Oh, no, no. All of our employees are field going employees, burn bosses. We have two engines, engine bosses and firefighters on the ground. And they go to all of our burns.
What's unique this year is we're building a prescribed burn module and where we will be hiring the locals there in those project areas to staff gain knowledge or qualifications because they may want to go work for a state agency or a federal agency. So building their tools in their toolbox and then helping out with capacity.
So they are our workforce that's out there, part of our resource needs for our burn plans.
[00:06:01] Speaker B: One of the cool things about being on a prescribed burn is that you really don't have to have credentials, although they are helpful. You can be a firefighter level two or just a person who is a citizen or a neighbor. And the owner of the land typically is not certified either. And I think you probably have the same opportunity for people.
[00:06:26] Speaker A: Yes.
You know, 100 so years ago we didn't know how to fight fire. And when I'm walking, going around and learning about the old ways of life, there was no fire schools or certificates or acronyms for qualifications. And so we empower the communities, the landowners, the tribes at any level. We always give that opportunity to, you know, build the foundation and build up from there. But some of us old folks, we don't, we don't want to go through all those hoops. And so we can gain that knowledge just with doing. And that's what torchbearer is about, is the action of Getting it done. And we all learn best, I think out in the field.
[00:07:14] Speaker B: Doing now, with all of your accumulated experience, you have been also training people up to do the same kind of work that you do, right?
[00:07:27] Speaker A: Yep. Yep. We. My cadre teaching Cadre teaches about 900 hours a year.
Those trainings are available via Zoom in person.
Many tribes have hosted trainings, free trainings for the communities.
PBAs have hosted trainings. And so I definitely want to encourage people to look at where your interest is and feel free to take a class or two.
[00:08:04] Speaker B: So you were the burn boss for a 23 acre burn down in Laytonville back in October. And that was on the ridge above Ten Mile Creek, which for folks who may know the area, it's near Wilderness Lodge, about three miles as the crow flies from Angelo Reserve.
Based on what I found out, and that's the top of the Fox Creek watershed. What I thought was interesting about that fire was that there were 27 landowners and they were all in on this and that the burn, the prescribed burn, was actually conducted on the footprint of the 2014 Lodge Complex fire and used the same control lines that were used for suppression to conduct ignition. Maybe you could talk about that. That's a pretty interesting.
[00:09:00] Speaker A: Yeah.
What we found out was, is that in the fire service, we have our values at risk and we bring in that risk back to the landowner or to the utility companies or whatever that structure may be. And so one of the landowners in the Ten Mile Creek project that's been hosted by Eel River Recovery Group in Laytonville got 27 landowners and multiple property jurisdictions crossing this project. Because what we found is that if we're only doing two acres here and two over here, and we're not connecting the dots, it's not really beneficial for forest hardening, veg management or fire prevention. And so these 27 landowners have 900 acres that are part of this project.
And we had this great barrier of the lodge fire and we burned off that dozer line, reintroducing fire back onto that landscape. And it was, it was a wonderful day.
[00:10:20] Speaker B: The.
[00:10:21] Speaker A: The landowner was there, I was in his hip pocket, he was in mine. And we had 54 community slash outer communities participants participating in it. And they were driving engines, they were mopping up, they were firing, they were holding. And so they. What we say is we like to start a spark in somebody's eye. And we definitely did that, you know, building that engagement so that that community can do it all by themselves at some point and not need torchbear.
[00:11:02] Speaker B: Yeah. Back in 2017, when prescribed burning was very new to Humboldt County. I went to a burn and I had a torch put in my hand, said go light that strip of meadow over there. And it was wonderful. And it's a thrill anybody can have. I wanted to get you to explain a little bit about why you're lighting fire on land that was already burned. What is the purpose of doing that?
[00:11:33] Speaker A: Fire has a cycle of life just like we do as humans. And if we don't maintain that fire back into those landscapes, it will need another treatment. And it's just another phase in the reintroduction of fire back onto our landscapes and watersheds. Because if we don't put fire into a treatment area within three to five years, it will basically be like resetting a computer. We would have to start all over with formatting.
[00:12:10] Speaker B: So this was 10 years, I think, since the lodge complex.
[00:12:14] Speaker A: Yeah, yeah. And we were up against it and burning towards the landowner's home.
[00:12:22] Speaker B: Okay, well that must have been a little nerve wracking. Was there excess fuel compared to what you would have preferred based on it being so long since the fire?
[00:12:34] Speaker A: No, actually the landowner was very proactive and did a lot of land management and forest management by himself with other grants available through the counties and state.
So I referred to it as a walk in the park because it was very gentle slope, less than 30%, very open and oak fur stand.
If you could see by background, that's the picture of that burn.
[00:13:04] Speaker B: Sorry, it doesn't come through on the radio.
[00:13:06] Speaker A: I know, but it was a very mellow burn and we were aiming for 30 acres. But you know, when we have that many people in a long briefing and everybody's learning everybody and everything about drip torches, we weren't able to get it all done. But we have lots more burns coming up in the next couple weeks.
[00:13:35] Speaker B: Yeah, maybe we should talk a little bit about the, the need for flexibility when you're doing these burns. Because obviously the variables for conducting a burn can change rather quickly.
[00:13:48] Speaker A: Yeah. Based on weather conditions, permitting requirements, air quality, all those things have to be taken into consideration because of our smoke management plans and our burn plans and then resource allocations, what activity is happening with our partners. Not that I would stop a burn, but I would be more skookum of what those receptive fuel beds are because of maybe some large fire growth in certain areas. And so there's lots of variables that we have to consider. And, and so we are planning, for example, we are planning some burning the 17th and 18th of January and these will be prescribed or piles and if allowed, based on weather conditions, we're going to attempt to do some three to five acre broadcast units, just little chunks getting it ready for a very big large 130 acre burn this spring.
[00:14:57] Speaker B: And where's that?
[00:15:00] Speaker A: That's in the, also in the Ten Mile Creek project area.
[00:15:02] Speaker B: Okay.
[00:15:03] Speaker A: Yeah, Yep.
What the concept is is we're trying to harden that watershed so that we don't lose that watershed to a wildfire which we've seen in many of my years of career losing communities, families and timber and a beautiful landscape that's now changing its fuel type from timber to a grass brush fuel model.
[00:15:32] Speaker B: Yeah, I think the point that's new to listeners still is the fact that we live in a fire adapted landscape. And so fire is actually an expected element in this landscape that we've been excluding for over 100 years. And now we're in an unprecedented situation where it has to be reintroduced through whatever means we can come up with to. And we have to figure this out.
And a lot of the same concepts, principles and variables that are used in fire suppression are used in prescribed fire.
Maybe we could talk a little bit about the, you know, most people think of prescribed fire as just fire fuel reduction. You know, it's just simply correcting that hundred year problem that we've created. But it's also what you're starting to describe in terms of restoring the forest. Maybe we could talk some about forest health and that objective.
[00:16:37] Speaker A: Yeah, forest health is what this grant is about. And you know, when we have excluded fire for 120 years on the landscape, we've weakened the trees, they thickened, they haven't rooted because they've been supported from the canopy, from another canopy tree. And when fire has been excluded there, the bark is more sensitive.
Bugs.
You know, when we're doing burns under oaks, we're taking, taking, getting rid of the worms, the lower vegetation, maybe there's a grass component in there. And we're trying to reintroduce those nutrients back into the soil to help fertilize the bigger, older growth trees.
[00:17:35] Speaker B: So you could say that there's a range of objectives from fuel reduction all the way down through forest health and into actual, what would be described more in terms of cultural burning, creating resources for people.
[00:17:54] Speaker A: They're all connected.
It's so interesting when we get a contractor to thin a forest and then some of our dry drainages start to release and start to flow water, water again, which that water then flows into our, our water streams which support our fish. And then let's not talk about all the wildlife benefits. I mean, it's just amazing how interconnected the things are that me for 30 some years never really put it in that perspective until I went and burned on some refugees in Nebraska and realized that if the, the swamps or the, the, the marshes over there are overgrown, the, the waterfowl won't land there.
And I was interesting because I never thought about prescribed fire and waterfowl before. And so, you know, when they say everything is connected, you can definitely see it when you start getting things back to its balance. And we all need to do this, you know, from the timber companies to the landowners to the community members. We all have to reset this together because no one person or agency is going to be able to do this alone.
[00:19:22] Speaker B: Right. And you actually pointed to another animal group that benefits from fire, which is the fish, the salmon in particular.
When you are burning, you're releasing the water that is otherwise being tapped by all those extra stems. And the creeks can rise even in the absence of rainfall. And there have been documented cases of that. In fact, the original book on prescribed burning by Harold Biswell has a couple of before and after pictures that show that. Precisely. So you've seen that on some of your burns?
[00:20:03] Speaker A: Oh, most definitely, most definitely. And then all the native grasses and plants that, that get stimulated after a burn that following spring. It's just amazing how you could take a pine forest that has 12 inches of duff and then that following year have native grasses and wildflowers pop up naturally.
Very beautiful.
[00:20:28] Speaker B: Yeah.
So you're planning to come back to this area in April of 2025 and continue with burning here?
I wondered how often I should say before we move on to that, just touch on how long it takes before that the streams begin to lose that flow.
[00:20:58] Speaker A: Lose it in the spring.
[00:21:00] Speaker B: Well, when the, when the vegetation begins to grow back, do you lose some of that flow?
[00:21:07] Speaker A: Well, we're talking what, like four to eight gallons a day. And so we're talking a stem of like 20 or 30 year old. And so we would probably start seeing that as, as the brush gets to 3 or 4ft tall. And you know that reprod reform natural reforestation that's happening is that it's probably 20 to 30 year mark is when we would see that depletion of water again.
[00:21:37] Speaker B: Wow. Okay. So it takes a while. All right.
Then we would have other problems probably before that.
[00:21:44] Speaker A: So we would basically have to rethink again.
[00:21:47] Speaker B: Yeah. Right. So then as I was starting to point to is you're going to be back in this same area in April and you're planning to conduct a 400 acre burn. Is that in one shot?
[00:22:04] Speaker A: Well, let's let. I've been there all winter and fall burning and I'm coming back and January again in a couple weeks to burn to reduce some hand piles that we did as a prep for an understory in the spring. And so we're going to be coming back from now until probably June burning. But the one burn that you're talking about, it's a large scale multi day burn with multiple units. And so it's not one huge burn of 400 acres, it's 168 here, 100 here, 70 here. And so it'll be over a period of time because we have to also remember weather conditions, air quality, all that kind of great stuff too.
[00:23:03] Speaker B: So you're coming back quite often.
[00:23:05] Speaker A: Yes.
[00:23:06] Speaker B: And the total acreage is for the.
[00:23:09] Speaker A: Project is 900 acres.
[00:23:10] Speaker B: 900 acres. Wow.
How, how does this get paid for?
[00:23:16] Speaker A: Cal Fire is, is funding this project through the Forest Health grant and Eel river is the, the recipient of that and are managing that.
[00:23:33] Speaker B: You mean the Eel River Recovery Project?
[00:23:36] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:23:36] Speaker B: Right.
[00:23:36] Speaker A: Yep.
[00:23:37] Speaker B: Okay, shout out to them.
[00:23:40] Speaker A: Yep. There's lots of, lots of money going into all over this, all over the state from private foundations, Fire Safe Councils, PBAs, RCDs, CAL FIRE, Forest Service, timber companies, the landowners themselves are paying for stuff. The tribes are doing it, recovery groups and the counties. We're spending a lot of money to get this mistake that we did 120 years ago to reset. And I think the biggest thing I want to stress on that is we can do a reset but we have to maintain it after that. We have to.
For many years, my career, we've put fire on the ground with the hopes of going back in, in five to seven years with a second entry and never did it and then lost it during the McKinney fire recently. And so I think that's one point that I want to stress is we can, we can masticate, we can graze, we can do all these things, but unless we follow through with prescribed fire and then a re entry of fire, it's going to be a lost cause in, in five to seven years.
[00:24:55] Speaker B: Yeah. So you've been going back in and doing an occasional pile burn, which, which also goes by conservation burn, I guess you can call it.
[00:25:05] Speaker A: Yeah, yeah. There's many different terms.
I was doing some research not too long ago on how many different ways we can say prescribed fire or cultural burning or conservation burning. And, and basically it is Fire on the landscape doing good.
Yeah.
[00:25:26] Speaker B: Sometimes you have to pile it, though, and other times you can just do a broadcast burn.
[00:25:31] Speaker A: Yeah. I mean, our contractor locally there in Laytonville is doing an excellent job piling where it's needed because of fuel loading, securing the edges.
And that pile is the prep for what should be coming as the understory burn in that spring.
[00:25:54] Speaker B: Yeah. So that would be.
You'd be creating what, a shaded fuel break in that situation?
[00:26:00] Speaker A: Yeah. I mean, the edge could be considered a shaded fuel break for sure. Yeah. And what it does is it makes my insurance company warm and fuzzy when they know that I have a nice 60 foot buffer all the way around my unit and road systems and bridges or rivers or trails. And the escape potential is minimized.
[00:26:25] Speaker B: Yeah, the escape potential not just for the people who live there, but if firefighters have to come back there, they're safe as well.
[00:26:33] Speaker A: Yeah.
If you go into some of those places, when I went and did site visits, I was like, there would be no way I would send my strike team of engines in here.
[00:26:45] Speaker B: Right.
[00:26:46] Speaker A: Just because it's too narrow, it's too tight, there's no way out, there's no signage. And that's why I'm really appreciative that, you know, all, all the agencies and, and RCDs and, and everybody is coming together from home hardening to firewise Communities, Fire Safe Councils to address this problem. And that's never happened in my lifetime that I. That I remember.
[00:27:12] Speaker B: Yeah. Thanks for mentioning all those points, just other aspects of the work of the Fire Safe Council.
So I wanted to loop back a little bit to the public events that happen as a part of this. And some of the work that you're doing is just you going out there with perhaps employees to do the pile burning. But there are larger events, typically on the broadcast burns, that are more organized in terms of making it an event. Right. So ones that I've been to, the owner is not just the host and looking out for everything, but they put out a big spread for all of the burners and the volunteers who come out there. And it's a bit of a party at the end of it.
[00:28:11] Speaker A: Yeah. I mean, it's a way of building cohesiveness and getting folks out there to gain knowledge on safely burning. Because nobody, even if it's the single burn pile, wants an escape. And so any experience, anytime we can get the public out there, whether it's a pile burn or understory burn, give them a torch, give them a hand tool, teach, teach each other things. I Think that's one of the biggest things is we're teaching each other and then eating some good food and drinking a few sodas or some water and just collaborating.
We use those buzzwords of partnerships and collaboration, but that is truly in my mind, what it's all about is on the ground.
[00:29:03] Speaker B: If you're just joining us, we're talking with Scott Steinbring of Torchbearer in Soames Bar. He's a private burn boss. And this is fire radio on kmud. Thanks for joining us, Scott. I want to continue with the concept of potential operational delineations, or pods. This is something that is still fairly new, at least to me. Apparently it's been around in Humboldt county for four or five years. Started coming in up in Klamath and has moved through a significant part of the state. You just sent me a link to a website that shows that on a map. I was really impressed by how far it's traveled, how many pods have been set up. Maybe you could just talk about what pods are.
[00:29:58] Speaker A: Yeah, pods are looking at a large community or a large watershed, a very large landscape. And we do this in wildfire a lot where we think, where we can do the best good to save as much as we can.
And so just think of pods as maybe like, for example, that could be a pod, and within those pods, there could be units or high, high interest areas that we are treating to make our best stand at protecting the wildlife or the landscape.
And we're just gathering all that data. And Forest Service is the one that is spearheading a lot of that, is looking at within that geographical area. What boundaries do we have, what. What issues may arise, Whether it be a jurisdictional boundary, maybe a timber company, maybe a tribe. It's bringing all that information together to best fit how we're going to treat that landscape, whether it be for forest health or in a wildfire scenario. So it's a twofold concept that's coming through pretty well and building from the feedback of not only the agency perspective, but maybe the landowner or the tribe or the nonprofit. It's bringing everybody together for a seat at the table because we know that we can't do it all ourselves.
[00:31:41] Speaker B: So a pod then, is a sort of overlay that crosses boundaries, boundaries between land ownerships that are designated in order to either defend against a wildfire or to be used as a firing line so that you have control in either case.
[00:32:08] Speaker A: Yeah, fire has no boundaries.
And when we are doing in prescribed fire or treatment, we're always following a boundary. And Many years ago I was like, why are we stopping it here? Why aren't we allowing it to go here and come to find out the value of timber was there, or endangered species, or this. Or maybe this lantern wanted to fire all the way to their land. This one did.
So, you know, it's bringing those jurisdictional boundaries together and figuring out what is the best management tool we can use.
[00:32:48] Speaker B: In that section and who gets to make these decisions. How are they arrived at?
[00:32:54] Speaker A: Well, hopefully we are in the day of age where everyone has an opinion and everybody can share their thoughts.
The folks that are building these pods are the Forest Service in the research centers, but they are getting feedback from the tribes and the communities at large. So whether it's our local government, CAL Fire, Forest Service, bia, we're all coming together, even the communities in our community meetings and talking about that stuff in pods.
[00:33:30] Speaker B: Well, that's essential, I would think, because the pods straddle property lines. And in a situation like that, you definitely want everybody on the same page. For sure. Yeah.
So what is the current level of development of pods in Northern California?
[00:33:55] Speaker A: I believe I may be wrong, but I believe the current level of pods is that we are still working through how that jurisdictional boundary will look.
It's held us up for many years and I think that we're still in the gathering data on feedback on many pods, just not in Northern California, because everybody's input's important.
[00:34:27] Speaker B: Now you mentioned gathering data. It's not just from the people, which is also crucial, but it's spatial analysis as well. Remote sensing.
[00:34:36] Speaker A: Yeah, remote sensing, gis, fuel loadings, all the previous treatments, all fire scars, all these are little, little nuggets that are getting fed into this new world that we live in.
[00:34:54] Speaker B: Yeah. So fire scars actually can provide a firing line of sorts. You know, you've got a place where there's a low fuel area.
[00:35:05] Speaker A: Yeah, for, for many years. When I first started, I was taught that we could always chase a wildfire into a fire scar because it would lower intensity and then we could catch it. What we're finding though now with our large fires is that if it's not a three year or newer fire scar, it's just as active as a non wildfire area, previously burned area.
[00:35:39] Speaker B: What are some other natural features or unnatural features perhaps that are used as pod boundaries?
[00:35:48] Speaker A: Could be roads, ridges, maybe a drainage, a creek.
What we look at is, you know, where we're going to be able to get resources.
Whether it's prescribed or thinning or logging or whatever the activity Is how are we going to get resources there safely, you know, and that is one of our drivers.
Road systems, trails, we're looking at all that kind of stuff.
[00:36:23] Speaker B: Yeah. The Southern Humboldt Fire Safe Council, that's us, has prioritized Mail Ridge as a boundary, as a defending line against fire coming from the east. We have the Santa Ana winds, typically, I'm not sure that's what we call them up here, but they come from the northeast when the wind is blowing out of the valley hot in the fall. That's particularly when we're concerned about it. And that's the driving wind for wildfires quite often. And so we've identified Mail Ridge, which runs north, south, east of Route 101, as a line of defense. And I suppose that's probably a pod boundary. Is there a map where we could see all these delineations?
[00:37:19] Speaker A: I don't know if it's available to the public yet. I didn't do enough research on it to see which is available still.
But if there is more people interested in the pods, we could definitely look that stuff up and share those links or maybe reach out to our local partners of Cal Fire or our Fire Safe Councils or Forest Service. And I'm sure that they have lots of folks that are working on those with the urgency of getting large scale to the pace and scale that we are trying to get to with burning.
[00:38:05] Speaker C: KMUD is a community radio station in the Redwood region of Northern California. Donate to support people powered
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[00:38:18] Speaker A: So.
[00:38:19] Speaker B: We'Re listening to Scott Steinbring, who's a private burn boss out of Soames Bar, talking about prescribed burning and prescribe potential operational delineations for both ignitions and suppression.
If you wanted to call in with questions or comments, the number here at the KMUD Studio is 707-923-3911. Let's move over to permitting and talk about the first one dealing with smoke, which is handled by the North Coast Unified Air Quality Management District, where we are.
That's probably the first hurdle that a homeowner would have to cross in order to put fire on their own landscape.
[00:39:15] Speaker A: Yeah, so the folks at Air Quality District, they want to see good fire too, but they have been tasked by the state agency to ensure clean air under the Clean Air Act. And so if you're burning 10 acres or more, a smoke management plan is required along with a burn authorization.
If you are doing an individual single burn, you would just need to ensure that it's a burn day.
And that smoke management plan would cover anything over 10 acres or tonnage or multiple days. And that plan basically is, is looking at the receptives of what's where, where would our smoke impact, what schools, what communities, places of interest, and then how we're going to mitigate it. And mitigation could be just, you know, we don't want to smoke out our neighbor to the, to the east. So we want to burn with, with this direction of wind. Right.
So it's about a 12, 13 page smoke management plan addressing all the concerns and how we're going to mitigate traffic and all sorts of good stuff.
[00:40:39] Speaker B: So a smoke management plan is required for fires above a certain threshold in size. Right.
This would not be required by someone who gets a normal regular standard burn permit from the air quality management district or even a non standard unless they're starting to get into more acreage. Right, Correct.
[00:41:08] Speaker A: Correct.
[00:41:09] Speaker B: And I think it's important to point out that the folks who determine whether it's a burn day or not are not the same people who issue the permit.
Right.
Cal Fire is the one who does that.
[00:41:24] Speaker A: No, Cal Fire does not.
[00:41:26] Speaker B: Okay.
[00:41:27] Speaker A: All right.
Everybody needs to stay in their lane.
Carb. The air resource board issues out the notification of a burn day and then it's up to the air districts based on their local readings on whether it's a burn day or not.
[00:41:46] Speaker B: Huh.
I thought that, I thought that I called a Cal Fire number to find out whether it was a burn day or not. I guess I didn't.
[00:41:55] Speaker A: So the two work closely together because we don't want to set the community up to fail. And if we see that there's a wind of 30 miles an hour coming, we, we may say that it's not a good burn day and, and control it like that, but that's a weather thing.
And so air quality looks at air quality and then fire looks at fire. And so then we go into the, the fire side of it. And then you on your permit, it may say you need to call the dispatch center for a notification or your local government, whatever local fire department is in your area. And it's just a good neighbor thing also to let them know, hey, I'm going to be putting smoke in the air, you know, with one pile, it's not a big deal, but when you light 10 of them off, it produces lots of smoke. And we've taught the community in public that smoke is all bad.
And so then we have the fear of fire. And so then we throw a bunch of people in helicopters and airplanes and dozers and Fire trucks. And we race there and find out it's just a landowner doing their due diligence to manage their land. So notification is very important.
[00:43:15] Speaker B: So when does notification have to be done?
[00:43:21] Speaker A: For a smoke authorization, it is 72 hours in advance. That way they can see what that weather is going to look like.
For Cal Fire, a residential just could be the day of the burn.
But in my burn plans and with my permitting, I do public notifications a couple months in advance. I do a community one, a public service announcement on top of a community meeting maybe if needed.
And then a week before me and the Cal fire unit or the permitting agency, BIA is out walking the ground looking for any concerns. And then my notification, I'm on speed dial with them and I'll just call up the dispatch center.
This is open communication for the for two weeks, going back and forth. I'll call the dispatch center up, let them know I'm starting my test fire, and I'll keep them updated throughout the day and then close out with them at night and let them know about resource availability on site and projected work plan for the next day. And so it varies a little different. And if anybody's ever more interested in that, I'd be happy to share that with them.
[00:45:03] Speaker B: All right, well, I'm going to. I know this is probably not just me. This is hard to grasp, but I'll stick my neck out again so that other folks don't have to.
The folks who actually suspend the burn permits. What organization is that?
[00:45:22] Speaker A: So a suspension of a LE62A, which is a single residential burn pile, that is the normal permit that Cal Fire issues. I'd like to point out that cal fire issues 1, 2, 4 to 5 other permits. And so when you go online, which is a godsent blessing, is you can go online and request all these permits. You can request a Cal fire campfire permit. You can request an LE62A, which is a residential single pile burn permit. You can request an LE5, which is multiple piles in a large landscape, more than one.
Or you can do an LE7 and 8, which is a broadcast burn. And those are just different elements, like types of equipment, like your 350 Ford and your 450 and your 550. Just different types of burn permits there. And Cal Fire is the one that permits these burn permits if they are on state jurisdictional boundaries, as we say.
[00:46:38] Speaker B: And state jurisdictional boundaries is everywhere, that the state has a responsibility for fighting fire if it gets away.
[00:46:44] Speaker A: Correct. And managing. And managing.
[00:46:47] Speaker B: Managing. Okay.
[00:46:50] Speaker A: And so I Think it's really, really important that when they do a suspension, not a burn ban, but a suspension, that we share the knowledge that that is affecting the residential LE62A. That is not the LE5 or the LE7 or 8. And so you may see like in October where we were under a suspension, but I had an LE7.
And that LE7 is just a more restricted burn permit. Like Scott Torchbearer shall have three engines on site and two dozers and a water tender. And this is the date Torchbearer can burn. And the weather parameters are, follow your burn prescription and just very tight and controlled, which is okay as long as the data shows that we can be safe.
[00:47:50] Speaker B: And those restrictions pertain to the particular permit that you have.
[00:47:54] Speaker A: Correct? Correct.
[00:47:56] Speaker B: Okay, good question. All right.
[00:48:00] Speaker A: I think I did, I did want to do a share of information. I don't know if it's on the calendar or not, but April 5th in Laytonville, we're having a very large community forest health extravaganza with lunch and dinner to talk about all the good forest management practices and lots of networking and good food. And so I would invite anyone interested to look for that forest health extravaganza and Laytonville, April 5, to learn more about what's going on and get involved.
[00:48:40] Speaker B: Yeah, thanks for mentioning that. I'm planning to go myself. The thing I wanted to mention or move to next is the use of fire to create biochar. Instead of incinerating it or chipping it or macerating it, creating something that puts carbon into a condition where it will remain in the soil for a very long time. How much of that have you been doing?
[00:49:10] Speaker A: We have done a very small scale.
You know, there's lots of professionals out there that are doing the biochar and the kilns and, and stuff. And, and I, I, I wanted to say that there's a tool in the toolbox for everything that you need except for that 10 millimeter that you always lose.
But the important thing is, is that when, when we're doing biochar, all we're really doing is we're dousing or putting out the piles at about 70%. So once the piles burn down 70%, we go ahead and put them out. One of the drawbacks with that is we need lots of water. And when we're in a drought stricken straight state, water is a commodity.
But you know, I, there, there's a right tool in the right place.
I, I see biochar and the kilns and the burn bots and, and Grazing and all these things as, as different tools in the right place at the right time.
And if we have it, it, it's, it's financially feasible and we've done the heavy lifting already.
Kilns, I think kilns in a, in a community perspective, a biochar or a burn boss at the, at the, at the landfill, all good ways of people to haul their green waste to.
It just got to be feasible and affordable because we're not going to have money forever. And so we have to get to a maintenance state or where the project has planned for the biochar or some kind of follow through.
[00:51:18] Speaker B: So in a prescription, can you specify that the brush will be left for, say the owner to save money and do the make, make the biochar themselves?
[00:51:28] Speaker A: Yeah, you could write the prescription, a little moisture with a fuel moisture higher and it would leave those sticks behind and just take the duff off.
Or you could thin it. We could, you could burn it, the landowner could burn it and then go in thin and biochar after that.
[00:51:53] Speaker B: The thing about prescribed burns or prescriptions generally that I learned on some of the burns is that they're written in order to maintain a certain amount of flexibility so that they can be adapted to the conditions or the later choices that say an owner wants to make. They change their mind about how to do things and there's, there's leeway written into the prescription for things like that.
[00:52:23] Speaker A: Yeah, when I, when I write a burn plan for myself versus a landowner, I'll ask them what they're comfortable with and what their objectives are, and I'll fit that into that prescription of a dry temperature, a wet fuel, moisture, a probability of ignition, flame, length of fire consumption. And so all those restrictions will be into that burn plan to make sure that it meets the intent of the landowner as a finished product at the end.
[00:53:04] Speaker B: Excellent.
Well, we're coming to the top of the hour, Scott.
You know, we haven't had any callers, but I hope this has been really helpful for people to understand all the different parts to this puzzle. We're dealing with, as I said, an unprecedented situation with a fuel load that has never existed in history before in a forest community, not just us, where it's an integral part.
And certainly the Native Americans who lived here first before we got here treated it that way as a member of the community. And so our job is to try to restore to the best of our ability the missing element of fire to the landscape and begin to live in a better harmony.
Scott, before we sign off, maybe you could let the listeners know how to reach you if they want to.
[00:54:10] Speaker A: Yeah, we are on most social networks, Facebook, Twitter.
You can visit our website at Torchbear, double R, remember double R, the growl.org or at G torchbearemail.
And come out April 5th and let's talk about good fire because we have to. We have to not fear fire in today's age.
[00:54:42] Speaker B: Yeah. So that's April 5th, and actually April 6th, there were likely to be field days as well, right?
[00:54:50] Speaker A: Yep, yep. The fifth is the gathering of the minds and paneling discussions and one on ones. And then the sixth, if the alignment happens, I plan on doing some burning that day to being productive. And if anybody wishes to observe or participate, feel free to reach out to Eel river and we'll get you on the list.
[00:55:19] Speaker B: Okay. It's April 5th and 6th at Harwood hall in Laytonville for the extravaganza. So this has been Fire Radio, a project of the Southern Humboldt Fire Safe Council. We've been speaking with Scott Steinbringer of Torchbearer in Soames Bar. And thank you very much, Scott. And thank you, KMUd.
[00:55:44] Speaker A: Thank you. Have a good night.
[00:55:47] Speaker C: This has been a KMUD podcast to listen to other shows and more episodes of this show. Find us on all the platforms where you get your podcast and also on our website, kmud.org.
