[00:00:02] Speaker A: KMUD podcast presents.
[00:00:12] Speaker B: Hello KMID listeners, and welcome back to Fire Radio.
I'm Gray Shaw and I represent the Southern Humboldt Fire Safe Council. Tonight we are going back through the work that's been done in this season in fuel reduction and in prescribed fire. Tonight in the studio, I have with me Tanner Spiess, who's the captain, the chief of the Telegraph Ridge Fire Department, and Koi Nguyen. Nguyen.
[00:00:47] Speaker C: It's Nguyen Nguyen.
[00:00:48] Speaker B: I really never gonna get it right.
[00:00:50] Speaker C: No, it's totally fine.
[00:00:51] Speaker B: Yeah.
And I'll let them introduce themselves. Camilo Stevenson is supposed to be joining us as well. And calling in tonight for the pba, the Prescribed Burn association, we have Henry Holbrook.
So maybe, Tanner, you could lead us off with a description of what has happened this season so far.
[00:01:12] Speaker D: Yeah, thanks. So my name is Tanner Spies. I'm the chief, Telegraph Ridge. I'm also kind of wearing a couple hats here.
I'm a member of the Southern Humboldt Fire Safe Council as well. And I also work on the county court coordination team for the Humboldt County Fire Safe Council.
So, yep, I'm a Prescribed Burn association member. And our fire department, Telegraph Ridge, works closely with the other fire departments in the area for prescribed fire season and, you know, often has resources involved in those fires. So in this conversation here tonight, the way I see this is fire radio. And coming from kind of the Fire Safe Council perspective is, you know, just that whole broad, broader perspective of, you know, how we can use fire and how we're trying to stay safe with fire at the same time. So obviously with prescribed fire or otherwise called good fire, beneficial fire, things like that. Right. It's, it's kind of, you know, leaning to the idea that fire can be a tool for us. It can be something that is useful. We all intuitively know that when we're sitting next to our wood stove at home. That's good fire, right? Also, a lot of us have had experience burning small burn piles around our place. That's good fire, you know, when you're just cleaning up stuff. So basically broadcast burning, another term for prescribed fire is just basically doing that on a larger scale. And a big part of why we're trying to use this tool is because there, there is a lot of built up fuels in the forest. And we did kind of go through this a little bit on a show a while back. I think it's still maybe available on the archives here on kmud. But we wanted to come back to this show to do kind of a review of our prescribed fire season that we went through this season. In October because we did have a really good few weeks of burn window. And that's kind of why we wanted to get the participants tonight together to kind of review that. So also we're expecting to call in Joseph Sandoval who is representing the Mattol Restoration Council. They were a big part of making, making the magic happen this season also with some of the projects. I also just kind of wanted to give Coy a little more of an introduction. Super stoked on. On him. He's a firefighter with me on, on Telegraph Ridge, but also on Bryceland. He does double duty, which means double the trainings. He does go to double the trainings for that.
[00:03:43] Speaker C: I'm on tech rescue too.
[00:03:44] Speaker D: And he's on Tech Rescue too. Exactly, yeah. And part of the Bryson fuels crew.
[00:03:49] Speaker C: Fuels reduction crew, yeah.
[00:03:50] Speaker D: Yep. And so he's involved with the defensible space projects that we've been talking about. He's, he's, you know, they're doing the.
[00:03:58] Speaker C: Work at the site on the ground.
[00:04:00] Speaker D: Boots on the ground. And he was also involved both with Telegraph Ridge and Bryceland and the fields reduction crew during these prescribed fires too. So, yeah, many hats also. Many of us wear many hats.
[00:04:13] Speaker C: Well, I just wear one hat. Just, you know, rotate hard hat.
Yeah. So yeah, I've been working with the fuels reduction crew in Bryceland doing the defensible space and it's been really, really cool experience. Actually, you know, I'm still learning. I'm just a firefighter, type two firefighter, one trainee.
I got a lot to learn. But, you know, as I'm learning, I'm also understanding more about the ecology that we live in because I'm actually fairly new to this community. I've only been here for about four years and just got involved with the volunteer department and here I am just, you know, doing all the cool stuff.
[00:05:03] Speaker B: Well, you know, defensible space projects are fairly new as well. I think maybe for the benefit of our listeners, we might want to talk about the relationship between the volunteer fire departments and the defensible space projects that have been going on.
[00:05:16] Speaker D: Sure.
[00:05:17] Speaker C: What would you like to know?
[00:05:19] Speaker B: So the funding and the personnel and.
[00:05:22] Speaker C: The equipment, as far as I understand it, the funding is grant funded. So we use everything between chainsaws, hand saws and loppers and our hands.
But yeah, I don't know what else to say really. I mean, we've just been working with the community.
A lot of people have signed up for us to come out to their cartilage and work from that zone zero to zone one, two, three, all the way up 100ft.
[00:06:00] Speaker B: And this is the defensible space.
[00:06:01] Speaker C: Defensible space, correct.
And we're just clearing any brush or in trees that are encroaching that are, you know, hazardous or you know, potentially flammable to their homestead or any other structures around their place. And a lot of it is, you know, we're helping elderly and I guess lower income folks that, you know, or just people that just aren't able to do that kind of work. And we come out with like, you know, at least four of us, but usually four to six and we just knock out so much within one day. And turning people's homes into like parks, they look, you know, really beautiful afterwards. And we're also, you know, being mindful of the different habitats for, you know, nature and, and actually being mindful of like how we're cutting and where we're cutting. You know, obviously we don't go towards, you know, water sources or anything like that.
And yeah, I'm learning quite a bit.
[00:07:13] Speaker B: Is this work ongoing or does it stop for the season?
[00:07:15] Speaker C: I, you know what, I think that'll, I think Tanner will probably be more qualified for that.
[00:07:19] Speaker D: Yeah.
[00:07:19] Speaker C: Yeah.
[00:07:20] Speaker D: So they actually have. The rest is December and they're, they're getting ready to finish that program up. It was a pretty fast program.
[00:07:28] Speaker C: Don't stop signing up.
[00:07:29] Speaker D: Yes. Still sign up. Because we're going to make any of the signups that we get that aren't able to be treated with this program will help us build another program. Hopefully help us build another attractive application for more grant funding. But this is a cool relationship between basically Fire Safe Council and Fire department. This is a perfect example for sure where it was envisioned through the Fire Safe Council. It was worked. It was developed through actually the county Coordinator team project which is another California Fire Safe Council funded grant program through actually Humboldt County Public Works Natural Resources Planning. Then with those partners put together an application was put into for the California Fire Safe Council defensible space program. We got it for Southern Humboldt. And with the implementation being done by Bryson Fire Volunteer Fire Department as a way to basically get firefighters jobs. So we continue to have volunteer firefighters around here which is, you know, and.
[00:08:34] Speaker C: It'S also really good training for us because you know, we run each job as if it was an incident. You know, we go through a briefing, we talk about safety, we do weather reports and you know, for us as firefighters, you know, it's, it's great training as well and being able to have that crew cohesion as we're out there, you know, working around someone's property. You know, we're also, like, keeping mindful of like, you know, ingress and egress. And we're, you know, thinking about how we, you know, would want to show up to this place if it were threatened by some kind of fire.
So we're also, you know, training as well.
[00:09:14] Speaker B: So was it a real congruity between the two groups, between the. Or I should say the two activities, the firefighting and. And the defensible space work? Because it's the same properties in both cases that you'd be dealing with.
[00:09:28] Speaker C: It's our community.
[00:09:29] Speaker D: Yeah. One, the, you know, defensible space is not only, you know, for the home, but it's also the protection, you know, from the home burning potentially to the. To the wildland, you know, so it goes both ways. And kind of one connection I was going to make between this and get us kind of back onto the good fire perspective is the defensible space has a prescription. That's kind of the idea is there's this basic prescription of how to create defensible space similar to how prescribed fire works with a prescription. And basically what that means is that we're just trying to do it with design intention for good effects, for positive effects.
[00:10:08] Speaker B: This is designing the landscape and the house or both.
[00:10:12] Speaker D: Well, so when you get into the design of the house, it gets into the category of home hardening, which is kind of a whole nother category that is super important also, which is actually.
[00:10:21] Speaker C: The first process of the defensible space project is somebody will come out and basically consult with the landowner as, you know, walk around their house and kind of talk about what they can do to harden their house.
[00:10:38] Speaker D: So you have the home hardening. Then your defensible spaces are Those zones, the 0 to 5, 5 to 30ft and 30ft to 100ft away from their house.
And then basically we get into the landscape level that we start thinking about treating with things like prescribed fire or shaded fuel breaks, mechanical thinning, that kind of stuff, which we're basically dealing with trying to reduce what is potentially an overload of fuels due to many, many years of fire suppression, to the point where now we need to deal with this excess fuels.
[00:11:15] Speaker B: Yeah. So we have.
I want to say that this is a call in program.
[00:11:21] Speaker D: I should jump in here.
[00:11:22] Speaker A: We've got actually full lines with your guests on them.
[00:11:27] Speaker B: Wonderful.
[00:11:27] Speaker D: Yes.
[00:11:28] Speaker B: All right, so where are they at?
[00:11:31] Speaker D: Sounds like we have some people we want to join in with this conversation. So we have Henry Holbrook who is coming on to represent the Humboldt County Prescribed Burn Association.
[00:11:41] Speaker C: What's up, bro?
[00:11:42] Speaker D: Are you there? Henry?
[00:11:43] Speaker A: Yeah. How's it going?
[00:11:44] Speaker B: Hey, welcome.
[00:11:46] Speaker A: Phone's a little clunky, but how's it going? Yeah, I'm Henry Holbrook. I work for the UC Cooperative Extension, coordinating the Humboldt County Prescribed Burn Association.
Glad to be on today. Thanks for inviting me.
[00:11:59] Speaker B: Certainly, yeah.
[00:12:00] Speaker D: Good to hear you. And let's see. So do. Do we have Joseph Sandoval?
[00:12:07] Speaker E: Yeah.
[00:12:08] Speaker B: Hi, Joseph.
[00:12:09] Speaker D: Hey, there's Joseph.
[00:12:10] Speaker E: Hey.
[00:12:11] Speaker D: Yeah.
[00:12:11] Speaker E: Joseph Sandoval Restoration Council. And my official title is Forest Restoration and Prescribed Fire Project Coordinator. It's nice to be on the show.
[00:12:21] Speaker D: Yeah. Thank you. Thanks for joining us. And we also have Camilo Stevenson, who's the Brycelyn Fire Public Information Officer and also just an overall bad firefighter, so.
Badness.
[00:12:38] Speaker C: Yeah, bad ass. Can I say that?
[00:12:42] Speaker D: I don't know. That's why I skipped it.
[00:12:44] Speaker B: Right.
[00:12:45] Speaker D: Yeah. You there, Camilo?
[00:12:47] Speaker F: I am, I am. I'm hearing you guys. I don't want to jump in unless there's room, but I'll make a little space here for myself if you can hear me.
[00:12:54] Speaker C: Yeah, yeah, we can hear you.
[00:12:55] Speaker F: Yeah. It's good to be on the air. I just wanted to back up for like the last 10 years. Like, 10 years ago, when I joined Bryson Fire, I was not a very seasoned. I wasn't a seasoned firefighter. And over the last 10 years, I've seen just an incredible evolution of the process. I mean, when it first came in, we were doing a lot of pressure support with Cal Fire, and we were raising money to build our new fire station.
And I have to shout out to the indigenous people out in Karuk in the Yurok area because we basically started hearing about prescribed burning through their efforts, and it became a goal to get involved in that. And the amount of evolution I've seen since that was recognized now today, like, we've been out actually, like, getting funds and getting people out there, you know, paid to help prescribe burns. It's just amazing, really. And we live. In the last 10 years, we've seen some of the biggest fires in California's history.
So we know that depression is an issue. It's like we see this, the results of 100 years of depression, and we're just happy to be flipping the page on that as a member of Bryson Fire. And fortunately for Scribe Burning, it's a complex balance between safety and getting results, ecological results from the ground, with the necessity of bringing fire back. So, yeah, it's Good to have this topic talked about, and I'm looking forward to hearing more from you guys.
[00:14:35] Speaker D: Yeah, great. Well said, Camilo. Thank you.
I was thinking, too, that maybe we should kind of pass it to Joseph to talk about kind of how the MRC took lead on some of these projects and just kind of his perspective on this season, how it went through.
[00:14:53] Speaker E: Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. First of all, just really enjoyed what everybody's been saying, and Camilo really resonates with a lot of how I feel as well. The MRC has been having a goal of incorporating prescribed fire in a lot of our forest health and forest management projects over the last couple years. And this year we really got to put a lot of our procedures into practice. It was a real pleasure. We had a tremendous amount of resources that came and joined us in our first burn year. And we worked with Henry and worked with Tanner and worked with all the Southern Humboldt Department, Kai, and all the individuals from Brightstone as well. So it was really a successful year. You know, I spent many years in the professional suppression world, and it's just been an absolute pleasure to, of course, learn more about fire ecology and the use of good fire and trying to kind of continue that as we, as we, you know, go through these times. And in the last several years, in the last, you know, decade, we've seen what unchecked and untreated forest really produce in terms of wildfire. And it's pretty extreme. A lot of extreme fire activity throughout the state of California and in the Mattole Valley in particular. If you were to look at the past hundred years of fire activity in our county, we have quite a bit of acres burned historically. And so for us to be able to incorporate prescribed fire with our forest health projects, which I believe somebody was touching on a little bit earlier, where we have landscape level, shaded, ridge top fuel breaks, and if we incorporate prescribed fire with that, we're really using a holistic approach and really trying to engage the land and engage with the land to kind of not only reduce the fuel intensity, but also give suppression a good shot at holding fires on these ridge tops. So it's very dynamic and it's really an amazing opportunity, certainly for me and for our crews. And Coy, you were talking a little bit earlier about how the tie in between sort of being on fuels reduction crews and also being volunteer firefighters in your community.
You know, our crews are made up, you know, quite a bit of volunteer fire department personnel in our Senate Humboldt community are part of our fuels reduction teams. And you hit the nail on the head, it's being out there and we're not only working the areas and treating the areas, but then we're following up with prescribed fire and people have an opportunity to really dig in and get to know the areas that they're implementing prescribed fire on when. When we do get to use it. So it's just such a dynamic time for prescribed fire. And we really hope to continue to use prescribed fire and learn more from indigenous cultures about the cultural aspect of good fire and try and incorporate it in through our ecological and restoration projects throughout our portfolio of projects. So just a great time and we really look forward to working with people in our watershed and outside our watershed and this fire community. And it's been a really good opportunity and a really good year this year for sure.
[00:18:37] Speaker D: Yeah. Thank you. Yeah. You know, one thing too I was thinking would be interested to hear more about from Henry is kind of the tie between the UC Cooperative Extension and the pba. I know, you know, I know the UC Cooperative Extension up north has been very involved for years with you know, Lanya and everything. I just maybe thinking you could tell some of that story.
[00:18:59] Speaker A: Yeah. So the UC extension staff, Lenya Quinn Davidson and Jeff Stackhouse founded the co founded the Humboldt County Prescribed Burn association and that the Humboldt County Prescribed Burn association is the first one founded in California.
Basically they saw this issue that private lands weren't being treated with this amazing land management tool, went to Nebraska I believe and burned with private landowners over there on pretty large scales using the resources that were available amongst the landowners and were able to pull it off amazingly and. And brought that model back to California.
So that's kind of how the UC is tied in with the pva. They support us through finding us grants and things like that.
They fund the full time coordinator me.
So that's kind of the UC relationship with the pva.
[00:20:06] Speaker D: Yeah. Nice. It's a pretty cool piece of history.
[00:20:09] Speaker B: I think we also have Michael Evans on the line. Michael.
Did he drop out? He might not be here anymore.
[00:20:17] Speaker C: Oh well, that dude is a legend.
[00:20:19] Speaker D: Yes. We're expecting him to call in. Dude.
[00:20:22] Speaker C: He is like the perfect example of like how community can really chip in to do.
[00:20:28] Speaker A: We want to zoom out to what we all did this this fall.
[00:20:32] Speaker C: Yeah, let's do it.
[00:20:33] Speaker A: Kind of go over what actually happened.
[00:20:37] Speaker B: Yep.
[00:20:37] Speaker C: Yeah, let's do it after action.
[00:20:40] Speaker A: Cool. So for folks who weren't paying attention to Watch Duty or K Mud or those other outreach outlets that we try to use whenever we're announcing a burn, we between.
Let me Pull up my calendar here. Between October 11th and October 25th, this group here conducted six or seven burns, depending on who you ask.
And we were pretty much all on prescribed fires every single day over that course.
And so we hosted burns in Bryceland, Garberville, Edersburg, Honeydew, and a few places in between. All those places, we went to Mendel, and that was mostly forest understory, which if you've ever tried to burn in forest, you know, is challenging, but included some oak, woodland and grasslands.
I think Tanner can speak to how many volunteer departments were on that, but obviously would never have happened without so much support from all of the local volunteer departments, as well as I believe we engaged at least 65 of PBA volunteers. So that's folks coming out on their own time to participate and help us pull these things off. And, you know, that's partnering with Mattol Restoration Council. We received support from Cultural Fire Management Council, Mid Klamath Watershed Council, the Watershed Research and Training center, countless volunteer fire departments, and a ton of local landowners and community members, as mentioned. So that's kind of the overview of what we did.
I think it added up to about 165 acres, depending on who you ask.
And that might not sound like a big acreage, but if you know anything about defensible space, you know that the three acres around the house is more critical than the thousand acres in the backcountry getting good fire applied. And every single burn we did was either in support of a fuel break that had been implemented in the last five years or within a few hundred feet of a home or a neighborhood.
So that's. That's a lot of.
That's a lot of victories. Even though it doesn't sound like a lot of acreage, I mean, my opinion.
[00:23:17] Speaker D: It was really.
[00:23:18] Speaker A: And. And Tanner, I want to zoom back and say you're not just a PBA member. I would consider you a PBA leader as well. So thanks so much for. For everything you did for the PBA this. This fall.
[00:23:29] Speaker D: Yeah, thank you. Yeah, it's. It's. It's a really fun group to be a part of. I mean, that's what we're seeing too. I mean, it's really contagious. People come out, and I. You know, you really see the interaction between the different organizations. But then once. Once it's happening, everybody's just on one big, fun team, really. You know, that's how it ties in.
So. Yeah, you know, I was. I was just noting, too, the different types of burns, you know, that. That we went through, because we were burning every day and we were moving around. But some of the burns were led, you know, specifically, you know, for equip grant or for a forest health grant. Some of them were just straight landowner pushed, you know, and supported by the pba. Some of them were large scale land management projects that are, you know, through grant funded projects to, for community forest and you know, and even some were just fire agency. So it was, it was like a very big range of how they all got put together and where funding came from or, or sometimes it was almost entirely volunteer.
And so just to see that too, how we bounced around from project to project just to make it happen, just to get it done. And really, you know, some of you listening might wonder how did we pick these projects? Right? And you know, it's, it's kind of an interesting process I would say, is that basically, you know, it's kind of like we have this big spreadsheet full of possible projects that the Southern Humboldt Prescribed Burn association chapter and leader, Kai Ostrow has really, you know, led in an enormous way and also led in the process of building these prescribed burn plans. And he actually spearheaded project, a grant funded project to build a burn plan cadre where he taught some of us, a group of us, how to build burn plans. And we did a whole set of burn plans as part of this project. And some of those actually made it into this list.
And, and there are more going down the list. I think his, his whole list has close to 100 projects listed up. But then basically it's ducks in a row, right? What, what one had the most ducks in a row? Right. The fastest. What were the most shovel or burn ready? Right. And those went up the, the list. Right. And then we started just throwing dates out. Just throwing dates out of. Okay, well maybe here that day, because you don't know when you're two weeks out, you know, something's coming up.
[00:25:58] Speaker A: Well, Tanner, Tanner, let me slow you down and say there's one other factor that can really bump you to the top of the list.
How much have you volunteered for other people's burns?
[00:26:09] Speaker D: There you go. Yep. It's true. It's true. Well, and being part of it, right? Yeah, yep. Having put in the time before and. Yep, definitely. And that's a cool part of the whole PBA model.
[00:26:20] Speaker C: It was really cool going to all these burns and seeing some of the same faces show up on all these different days. And I think like that's what really kind of hypes me up on being a part of all this is like seeing consistent people, like really seeing the benefit of like the work that we're doing. And I mean, if we can get more people within our own community. Because a lot of those people were coming from like out of town, like up north in Eureka and stuff like that. Actually a few people from the Klamath came out to some of these burns, which is really cool. But if we can get more Southern Humboldt people to be a part of it too, I mean, that would be amazing.
[00:27:04] Speaker A: KMUD is a community radio station in the Redwood region of Northern California. Donate to support people powered
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[00:27:18] Speaker G: I.
[00:27:18] Speaker A: Would say from the PBA side of things, that was the major success of being able to burn. Back to back to back to back this year is just developing kind of a culture around good fire in the community. Not just for firefighters or just for the professional side of it, but the community, the landowner, the just average person who maybe doesn't have the time or the need or the physicality or whatever to be that professional. I engage with fire on that level. But folks coming out on their weekends or their day off of work, or wanting to get some exercise from their office job, or just wanting to learn a new skill and coming out back to back to back and getting really good at that skill, getting to know everybody else, gaining trust and earning trust in everybody that we worked with every day. Whether you were from a department or you were there on your first burn, you show up for your second burn and you know that person on the engine and that just made us by the end of it, this well oiled machine that I think when we come into spring burn season and if we get it, especially if we get a dry spell this February or you know, January, February, March time, we can really put that, those skills that we practiced into play.
[00:28:43] Speaker C: You promised me a burn in February, so I'm going to hold you to it.
[00:28:47] Speaker A: I can't. Hey, that should be another lesson from this podcast is you can never promise to burn.
[00:28:53] Speaker C: That's true. That's a sick burn, bro.
[00:28:56] Speaker B: Okay, we have Michael Evanson on the line.
[00:29:00] Speaker D: Yeah, speaking of awesome pba, just epic energy and just that Southern Humboldt volunteer spirit is Michael Evans here. He was, I mean anyone who was part of these burns knows what we're talking about.
[00:29:19] Speaker C: Who's there every.
[00:29:20] Speaker D: Yep, supply units doing so much work for everyone and just always with a big smile and with an awesome, contagious positive energy.
So that's how.
[00:29:32] Speaker B: Welcome to the show, Michael.
[00:29:35] Speaker G: Oh, you're killing me.
This is a great show and I'm Being reminded of everything that I love about working with the pba and it's just an honor to work with so many good people.
So, yeah, it's good to hear.
I guess something I reflect on just while you're talking is how much the PBA has grown in the years that I've been there. I think this three years now for me, the organization has gotten so much tighter and just new people coming in all the time. A lot of really good, strong, young energy is really welcoming as well.
And the leadership.
I'm listening to guys tonight that are. I see as my leaders and people that I've learned a lot from.
So yeah, it's just been great for me working and seeing that we're doing good for the community and all the time. And once again, the PBA has done a lot for helping me to learn besides working with, when I'm on burns, with people with more experience than me.
At the same time, they've enabled me to go to a lot of trainings. I've done my Firefighter 2 training and multiple other trainings that I went to. It's just, it's a good thing to be involved in. I think if you, if people are out there looking for something to do, to volunteer for the community, I think the PBA is a great, great place.
[00:31:32] Speaker C: To start and just for the audience. Are you getting this training through the pba?
[00:31:39] Speaker G: Yeah, yeah.
[00:31:40] Speaker C: And so it's. The PBA funds this training for you. So, so just for everybody out there. You don't have to become a firefighter to take part in these prescribed burns. You can totally get your firefighter one, you know, S190, S130 base level firefighter type two training through the PBA and not have to come to all of our crazy meetings on the days off when, you know, on Sundays when you're, you're supposed to be home.
[00:32:12] Speaker A: I'd like to clarify that.
[00:32:14] Speaker G: I'd just like to say it's a lot of fun involved too.
A lot of fun. And just like what was just being said right now, the different people that I've worked with, I see all the time now, like Coy and Henry and Tanner and on and on it goes. But yeah, they've all become good friends of mine and we've all got each other's backs as well. So yeah, it's a really good feeling for me.
[00:32:46] Speaker E: Yeah. Henry, I think you were about to kind of expand on what exactly the, the PBA in terms of a public association. It really is.
It doesn't necessarily have to be.
[00:32:58] Speaker A: Well, first of all, first of all, I just got to thank Michael again for volunteering every single day, bringing equipment to every burn, making sure it was functional. And we couldn't have pulled off this burn season without Michael Evans.
[00:33:10] Speaker D: Absolutely.
[00:33:12] Speaker A: Thank you so much.
[00:33:15] Speaker E: Mr. Zen.
[00:33:17] Speaker A: Oh, just to clarify the training factor, but yeah, the PBA does host trainings or we at least, we at least hire qualified instructors to host firefighter qualified trainings. But we also help find grants to. The uc helps find grants to fund trainings through volunteer departments because you know, you have to be qualified to teach those fire trainings. So things that I and Michael have gone through are our trainings hosted by local volunteer fire departments like Bryceland.
And we become firefighters just for our community rather than being in a department or whatever full time career.
[00:34:04] Speaker B: And if somebody wanted to become a volunteer for a prescribed burn, they wanted to get the training. What does it cost?
[00:34:13] Speaker A: Well, you, you actually don't need to have training to be a volunteer on a private land prescribed burn. So it all has to do with the standards of the landowner. So for example, if the landowner is the U.S. forest Service, you need to have all of this firefighter qualifications. But if the private landowner is okay with people being on their land without those formal trainings, you don't actually have to have them to be to engage with prescribed fire, which I always say that there's a place on a fire for everybody. So whether that's running the food unit or helping deliver drip torches and fuel, or crawling through the brush with something on fire, lighting everything on fire, there's a place for everybody on prescribed fires. And I think that's kind of a cool aspect to this training conversation we're having is you don't have to be a firefighter, but those trainings really do kind of supply you with good information. So come out to a burn, see if that's the thing you want to do, and then become a PBA member and you get access to the trainings that Brightland Fire holds. You get access to the trainings that happen in other areas. You'll get emails from me on a regular basis letting you know about other trainings. I believe we have a few PBA members right now traveling down to the S219 training that the Tribal Eco Cultural Restoration alliance in Lake county is hosting.
So that's kind of the gateway is just becoming a PVA member. Coming out to a burn and then you can decide whether you want to be a firefighter or not is another aspect to that. But conversely, I do also host a fire lighter training for folks who want to get a taste of it. Want to know how to be safe and effective on a prescribed fire before showing up. So those don't qualify you as a firefighter, but they give you the knowledge and skills to really engage. And I think that was another success of this year is I was able to host one of those trainings at Cal poly Humboldt and 50 students showed up. And I tell you guys, it was some of the best first time radio communication I'd ever heard. I was shocked and everybody was bright eyed, bushy tailed, paying attention the whole time. And that really showed this year with us having folks who aren't firefighters engage, but really be successful and safe. So yeah, that's my $0.02 on the whole PVA and training training thing.
[00:37:02] Speaker C: Thanks for clarifying.
[00:37:02] Speaker D: Yeah, I was thinking I could take it back up and scale a little again. Back to where you were saying, Henry. Just kind of run through a very quick kind of synopsis of some of the projects that we did this season, right?
[00:37:14] Speaker A: Oh, yeah.
[00:37:15] Speaker D: So kind of starting, you know, we did two different units on what's called the old Brycelyn Ridge fuel break project. And, and many in the KMUD audience here who are around the Redway area or you know, the kind of southern Humboldt area might have seen those, those two, they're pretty high visibility from say, Redway. Those are run along the old Bryson Ridge in between Bryceland and old Bryceland Road and have been designed specifically to reduce fuel and create a fuel break, you know, a strategic fuel break. So it's a massive project.
That's one of Kai Astro's designs there. And we were able to chunk off two more units for over 80 acres this season. Those were highly, I guess not, not, I guess, technically complex. I mean, as far as the complex rating, that's a part of the prescription. But they were complex for sure. Very steep, very thick underbrush, very like challenging burns and.
But, but really great results, I think. Yeah. And we got a couple different kind of. We did them in two separate weeks. Different, about a week and a half apart. And the first one was a really hot prescription and went. Went really well. And. Yeah. And the other one was just this massive valley project where we had to, you know, hike an enormous amount for, for the whole.
[00:38:47] Speaker A: Some of the PBA members have nicknamed those two days Spicy Friday and Brushy Sunday.
[00:38:53] Speaker D: Yeah. Yep, that's. Yeah. So those, those involve Brycelyn, Telegraph Ridge, Shelter Cove, Palo Verde Oil Gulch Fire, the pba. And then you. We had the Swoffer project, which is right outside of Garberville and very Interesting. Like, also ties into the Garberville fuel break, so strategic value there. But it's also a private landowner led project for basically land management through the pba. That was a pretty much all volunteer project led by Henry and the pba.
And it was, it was a little bit on the more moist side of the prescription. Right. So like, interestingly, through these, this time era, right, we are swinging kind of back and forth depending on, on the weather and the time and so do you, do you have anything you want to say about the software one, Henry or anybody else?
[00:39:46] Speaker A: Yeah, I mean, just that you're constantly balancing all of these environmental resource priority demands. And yeah, it was a little moist, but I think that some good fuels were reduced there. And yeah, we still have an opportunity to do more in that. In that area. Should we just say. Yeah, just that this whole window was kind of like that. Yeah, for day to day it was, it was dry or cool or wet or foggy or whatever. But.
[00:40:17] Speaker D: And that one also.
[00:40:18] Speaker A: And we were able to do good work.
[00:40:20] Speaker D: That was also built. This was the second year, so it was a second unit off of last year. We did a unit there as the beginning. So it's, it's a pretty cool landowner led and really pushed, you know, vision.
[00:40:33] Speaker A: That was the other success of that Swafer burn this year was last year we had intended to burn. What was it? It was around 20 acres. The unit we burned this year and the unit we burned last year all in one day. And after we burned the first five acres, we found that smoke was beginning to impact the Garberville Medical Center Hospital.
And we decided to call it off and not burn the second unit. And so we came back this year with serious concerns about smoke impacts. And we had all these plans to shut it off if the smoke got anywhere near the hospital. We had so many people monitoring smoke monitors in Garberville itself and somehow the smoke got sucked into the black hole that exists somewhere in southern Humboldt and just missed the highway, missed the hospital, missed the town for a large portion of the time it burned. I think we only had a couple small spikes, but I think that was one of our concerns and one of our major successes with that. Yeah, in there being so close to town.
[00:41:47] Speaker D: Yeah, I think that goes to the point, right. Of what makes that project special too is it really is kind of the closest to the wild and urban interface being right next to Garberville. And, and just so therefore it has a lot of potential value in its strategic fuel reduction level, you know, to the town of Garberville. But also you have the complexity of having to, you know, really consider the sensitive smoke receptors because you are close to a, you know, a residential center.
[00:42:16] Speaker C: You mean Intermix?
[00:42:18] Speaker D: That's actually closer to an interface right there.
[00:42:20] Speaker C: Oh, okay.
[00:42:20] Speaker B: You know, what we're talking about here is the terminology of interface is a little less applicable up here where folks are penetrating the woods a lot more than they are, say in the suburbs. So Intermix makes more sense to use.
[00:42:34] Speaker C: Yeah, yeah.
[00:42:35] Speaker D: We were talking about. So most of these burns actually did involve a really good example of the wildland urban intermix, like the Brycelyn Ridge fuel break projects. Right. Those were. There were houses and buildings and infrastructure within the whole area that we had to protect. And it was mixed in. So it wasn't a hard interface line, it was a mixed in line. So we, you know, assets at risk and that. That's a level of complexity also.
But then the software one is closer. Yeah. Right. To Garberville and, you know, is pretty special in that way. I think it's the only one that really, I think out of this group really had that proximity, you know, to a town.
Yeah. Then we move to the Marshall, our expert, which is Peter Marshall, the chief of Honeydew Fire. That's his property. And that was led by the Mattol Restoration Council and PBA and Agency Smith supported.
[00:43:34] Speaker C: That was super fun too.
[00:43:36] Speaker D: Beautiful land. Very beautiful land. Beautiful grass.
[00:43:40] Speaker B: That was a meadow burn.
[00:43:41] Speaker D: Yeah.
[00:43:42] Speaker C: It was awesome to work with petroleum and Honeydew.
[00:43:44] Speaker D: Yep.
[00:43:45] Speaker C: Yeah. Because I never see those guys, but I'm friends with all those dudes.
[00:43:48] Speaker D: Yeah. Including a little more of the lower Mattol community.
[00:43:51] Speaker B: What's interesting about that Marshall burn was that it was a two day burn and the strategy was to set the stage for the second day during the first day so that that second day would go well. Maybe you could talk a little bit about that.
[00:44:07] Speaker D: Yeah, yeah. How about Henry or Joseph, do you want to get into the marsh word a little more?
[00:44:14] Speaker A: Yeah, I mean. Oh, go ahead, Joseph. Yeah, sure. You're. You're burned.
[00:44:19] Speaker E: Go right ahead, Henry, if you'd like.
[00:44:22] Speaker A: No, it's just that I guess you just call that a black line operation. So we often do that at the beginning of every single prescribed burn, where our first phase of a prescribed burn is trying to implement what we call the catcher's mitt, which is, you know, we put in control lines. Right. Like whether it's a road or a hand line or a mowed line down to the nubs, we put in a control line and then we Burn off of that slowly in order to increase the effectiveness of that line. And so often you'll hear on a prescribed burn, oh, we want a good black line to 30 or 50ft, often, sometimes more.
But that being such a remote location, I believe the burn boss just felt more comfortable taking it slow and putting in that black line the day before, rather than putting it in in the morning and then conducting the rest of the burn throughout the day, which I thought was a really interesting operation. It gave us a lot of opportunities to play with black lining, whether it was using a hose and an engine or using backpack pumps and these weird floppy things on the end of a stick called a flapper that are actually incredible for putting out fire and grass water.
Yeah, yeah, exactly.
But, yeah, that was my impression of the day. Sorry, Joe, you want to go ahead?
[00:45:51] Speaker E: Yeah, no, that was a great explanation of sort of some of the operational components of it. And grasses can be a very dynamic fuel model to burn in. So having that catcher's mitt as Henry described is really, really, really important.
But one of the amazing components and sort of the operational, sort of broader plan in the long run is that we also prepared the landowner to, you know, have future burns in the area. So we were able to really, when we had this gathering of resources, when we really had everything in place, we were able to prepare that land and prepare that landowner and give that individual a really great opportunity with all of that surrounding blackline, to then come in when weather conditions are more favorable to burn in his oak woodland understory.
So, as Henry was saying, it was really a fantastic opportunity to see people from out of the area, such as tfmc, individuals from the Klamath and other areas of our southern Humboldt fire departments get the opportunity to burn in grass where normally they're burning and dense on their stories. So very dynamic.
An excellent opportunity to work with one another. Coming from the NGO side, there was a lot of preparation and shout out to our executive director, Sarah Voom, for doing a lot of this heavy lifting in consideration of our environmental checklist and everything related to it. It's not just showing up and burning. And then of course, the PVA and all the southern Humboldt folks and Michael just, again with those. The logistics are really what a lot of this, you know, moves on. So, again, it was really, really great to have you guys there. And then literally the very next couple of operational days, we got a totally different fuel model.
[00:47:54] Speaker B: 50 or what.
[00:47:58] Speaker A: Mm.
[00:48:00] Speaker G: That's another really interesting part of doing these prescribed burns, is every one of them is different just from being the complexity of it and just the weather conditions and just the terrain, everything. It just makes for a different experience every time.
[00:48:21] Speaker D: Yeah.
[00:48:22] Speaker G: From my perspective. But I'd also like to add for people that are not that familiar with the prescribed burn and it's already been touched on, but the preparation is phenomenal. What goes into the planning and the preparation on the land before we can do it safely. And safety of everyone participating in the fire plus the land itself and the structures is paramount through the whole thing. And if anything goes sideways, even just slightly, it's all hands on deck.
And that really makes it for a really as safe as you can imagine environment to work in.
[00:49:10] Speaker D: Yeah. Good way to tie it back to. That's kind of the theme for the night right now because this is, you know, we're, you know, Gray here is hosting coming from the Fire Safe Council and we're kind of talking about good fire. And one of the big requirements for good fire is safe fire, basically. Right. So yeah, it's, it's, that's a major component. We want it to be safe. We want everybody, you know, it's a good fire when nobody goes home, when there's no injuries. Right.
[00:49:38] Speaker B: We hear a lot about unsafe fire, the wildfires that take off and burn a lot of houses and actually cause injuries and deaths. So it's important for us to interject the topic of good fire so that people have that frame for fire as well.
[00:49:53] Speaker D: Yeah, yep. And that's why there is so much that goes into this. As Michael was saying, I was wondering, do you guys want to move on to the Stansberry? So the next project that we did was the Stansberry RX burn, another one led by the Mattol Restoration Council, I think got about 12 more acres on that one. Is that correct?
[00:50:13] Speaker E: Yeah, yep.
[00:50:16] Speaker D: And that's private ranch land, correct?
[00:50:20] Speaker E: Correct. And also a part of our larger forest self shaded fuel break work from several years ago.
[00:50:28] Speaker D: Nice. Yeah. And that's a. You can see this recurrent theme too of how there are these stacked objectives. Right. Oftentimes the objectives. Because to do a prescribed fire, specifically a prescribed fire has to have specific objectives. Right. You're not just lighting stuff on fire to burn it, you know, that's the difference. Right. And so a big part of it is what are the objectives? What are we trying to accomplish with this? And yeah, you see like as we're reading down. Oh yeah. There's oftentimes it could be grassland restoration or oak woodland restoration for abatement, but that oftentimes also stacks the functions with fuel reduction, strategic fuel reduction. So oftentimes it seems like we are accomplishing multiple things at the same time.
[00:51:15] Speaker G: Right.
[00:51:15] Speaker B: And that's a whole fire murder. Yeah, we are definitely interested in. Fuel reduction is probably the first thing people think of when they consider what fire prescribed fire actually is. But originally fire that was done before the settlers arrived was for multiple purposes. And the list is long for what those purposes are.
[00:51:36] Speaker E: Yeah, non native plant species removal, you know, oak woodland restoration.
Truly one of the pleasures of working with the MRC in this last couple years has been to learn what a tool for restoration prescribed fire can be and how it can fit into the components of our other broader restoration work.
And again, just the STANSBURY Burn was just 180 from where we were just several days before that on the Marshall burn in terms of its, you know, dynamic complexities coming from dense understory, just night and day difference. So just another example of how interesting and dynamic the prescribed fire implementation can really be. And that again too drew from a lot of different community members. Drew a lot from different sort of fire community members. We had the pleasure of working with Jose and Andrea from the Watershed Training center as our. As our burn boss. And again PBA and the southern Humboldt fire community just instrumental in the success of these implementations. So again, just big shout out. We're really looking forward to going in there. And this is also. You guys spoke a little bit to it before where we have all of these projects kind of lined out and fire ready so that when we hit these prescriptive windows we can go back in and build off of things that we've done the previous season.
Because it really is a finite amount of time that we get during that fall burn window. So getting to identify things and be extremely nimble and able to get to these areas. It really takes a community to make these things happen and bring the resources to bear to do it not only effectively but safely. Absolutely.
[00:53:45] Speaker D: So then we had two other burns for the season. The Yokohama north, which was a second unit of a larger project in the USO Redwood Forest with Redwood Forest Foundation International. This incorporated, this was another grant funded project that basically is a project to promote the idea of large scale landscape scale management through fire. On the. You saw redwood forest as opposed to mechanical thinning to see, you know, the benefits and the, the economic feasibility. So that was a really great one. It was highly prepped. It was a highly prepped unit beforehand. And so it was a really beautiful burn.
[00:54:26] Speaker B: How many acres?
[00:54:26] Speaker D: There was 20 acres.
We did a full 20 acres that day. And then the following day we did the Eddersburg Fire Station burn, which was one that I was a major part of that. The Edwardsburg Fire station is the Telegraph Ridge Fire Department. So that was one that we built through the Edersburg Fire Safe Council capacity Building grant as a shovel ready project.
So we built the burn plan, we organized the pieces, got the ducks in a row, and it just so happened that we were able to put it in here. So that was a good accomplishment on that planning for us of what we were doing in our fire district. And that one was specifically to do fuel reduction, strategic fuel reduction around our station. It also went onto the French ranch. The French family are great neighbors. And it tied into oak woodland restoration and grass restoration and fur abatement and then just major training and kind of a high public visibility project because it's right along Edersburg Road. So everybody who was driving by that day and for the next couple of weeks saw, saw the effects. And really that was a beautiful day too. We were really lucky. It was the latest one. We weren't sure if understory was going to burn, but we had a surprising drop in RH that like later in the afternoon and got really great consumption. I wish we had more to talk time to talk about all this. We're running out of time here. There's so many elements that I was thinking maybe we could get into, but it just. The time goes fast, so I'm going to pass it over to Gray to conclude.
[00:56:06] Speaker B: So thanks everybody for joining us to talk about prescribed fire and the fuel reduction work that's been done over the past season.
This has been fire radio, which is a program that's now being done by the Southern Humboldt Fire Safe Council. And I'm Gray Shaw and I'm your host and thanks for joining us.
[00:56:28] Speaker D: Thank you.
[00:56:29] Speaker C: Thanks.
[00:56:29] Speaker E: Yeah. Thank you guys.
[00:56:31] Speaker G: Thank you.
[00:56:31] Speaker C: Talk to you guys later.
[00:56:35] Speaker A: This has been a KMUT 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.
