Marin fire prevention forum draws 200 in wake of North Bay devastation

March 08--Anxious about the risk of wildfire, about 200 Marin County residents turned out to a forum Tuesday to find out how to be engaged in fire preparedness and to hear lessons learned from the deadly North Bay wildfires.

"Disaster preparedness is at the top of everyone's mind," said Marin Supervisor Judy Arnold, who kicked off the discussion at the Board of Supervisors' chambers at the Civic Center in San Rafael. "I think we should take advantage of the interest and engagement that we are seeing now."

Arnold and Supervisor Dennis Rodoni are members of an emergency preparedness subcommittee that hosted the town hall session to develop strategies for fire preparedness. "This committee meeting is an important first step in our work," Arnold said.

NORTH BAY FIRES > MORE COVERAGE

Rodoni added, "While we can lead the discussion around lessons learned it is only with our communities and neighborhoods working together that we can make a real difference and become better prepared."

The two-hour event featured a 15-person panel with representation from first responders, city managers, land managers, insurance professionals and parks officials.

The experts offered tips on fire preparedness, encouraged residents to seek civilian emergency training and to familiarize themselves with their neighbors and to organize. Specifically, Rodoni encouraged residents to investigate how to become a FireWise community.

One focus of the event was to highlight the daunting task of land management and reducing the fuel load that feeds wildfires.

The county's highest risk zones are known as the wildland-urban interface. There are approximately 69,000 Marin homes within this risk zone, where residents are surrounded by vegetation.

The Marin County Parks and Open Space District oversees 34 open space preserves over 16,000 acres and has 3,400 neighbors, said James Chayka, superintendent. The district is spending about $2 million on vegetation management this year.

Cyndy Shafer, a senior environmental scientist for California State Parks, said that three state parks were burned in the North Bay fires, including Trione-Annadel, Sugar Loaf Ridge and Robert Louis Stevenson state parks. In Marin, there are seven state parks covering about 14,000 acres.

The Marin Municipal Water District oversees 20,000 acres and 1,000 acres of fuel breaks, annually. Along the borders, there are some 13,000 homes. The district is increasing its investment on vegetation management by $400,000 a year, and over a two-year period $3.5 million will go toward reducing the fuel load, said Crystal Yezman, facilities and watershed division manager.

There was discussion about climate change and diseases such as sudden oak death and pine pitch canker disease that is prolific throughout the watershed and the Point Reyes National Seashore.

Working in Point Reyes, Jordan Reeser, fire manager officer with the National Park Service, said he is reminded every day of the Mount Vision Fire, which in 1995 torched 12,000 acres in the Point Reyes National Seashore, destroyed 45 homes and cost $6.2 million to suppress.

"We're lucky we didn't lose any lives that year," he said. "But the conditions that existed then up there now are far worse ... and that's unfortunate."

Overall, land managers and fire officials had a message that they need the community's help.

"Fire is a community problem," said Mill Valley fire Chief Tom Welch, representing the Marin County Fire Chiefs' Association, who is also a North Bay fire victim. His home in the Coffey Park neighborhood of Santa Rosa was leveled in the Tubbs fire.

Welch said that while all branches of government have a role to play, "there are responsibilities that you have as well, so I encourage you to get informed on those responsibilities."

The Marin County Community Wildfire Protection Plan suggests collaborating with residents to seek inspections, create 100 feet of defensible space and clear overgrown vegetation on evacuation or emergency access routes.

Among the tips offered were assembling a "grab and go" bag, enlisting neighbors for an evacuation plan, helping older or infirm neighbors to clear brush, signing up for text or phone notifications through AlertMarin.org, obtaining state-sponsored fire insurance and signing up for an evacuation drill with the local fire department.

Attorney Don Lesser of the Lesser Group, based in San Rafael, said his firm represents insurance policy holders and advises businesses to make sure they are properly insured. He displayed the number 74 on a screen to start his presentation.

"Seventy-four percent is the percentage of Santa Rosa fire victims who didn't have enough insurance to rebuild their homes," he said. He added that it would cost tens if not hundreds of thousands of dollars to rebuild for those people. "Insurance is a major, and in fact, critical part of disaster preparedness."

Larkspur resident Kathy Hartzell said she was impressed with the forum.

"It was fabulous, well orchestrated, covering a broad range of topics," she said. "Talking about insurance was ingenious, important information."

San Rafael resident Roger Byars lives in the Glenwood neighborhood and belongs to a homeowners' association in a community of about 650. The HOA has a disaster preparedness committee called "Ready Glenwood," and he attended the meeting to learn how to coordinate with other groups.

"The bottom line is that communities need to be aware," he said. "Communities have a responsibility, and they offered a lot of information about how to mobilize and get educated."

Marin County fire Chief Jason Weber said the subcommittee will make recommendations on fire preparedness strategies to the Board of Supervisors based on the feedback collected at the forum.

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