Marin County works to mitigate wildfire danger

SAN RAFAEL, Calif. - Even though fire season has been mild this year, Marin County and communities within it, are doing a lot more preventive programs to mitigate the risks which leads to wildfires, loss of property and lives.

The goal for many of Marin's narrow-road, hillside communities is to modify roads to improve evacuation and fire response. It is all part of the trinity needed to save lives and property, local officials say. 

"Those three things are failure to be alerted, a delay in leaving and just extreme fire behavior," said San Rafael Office of Emergency Services Deputy Director Quinn Gardener.

What residents must do is sign up for alerts, have a go bag ready at a moment's notice and have planned and practiced escape routes. 

"Knowing the other access road points for exit is something you have to be aware of here," San Rafael resident Ed Gurka.

What government can do is modify narrow lanes to wider, more orderly lanes by keeping fire away from those narrow lanes. 

"What we're trying to do is create basically a tunnel of vegetation. So, it's going to be working off the road, ten feet on each side onto public and private property as well as 12 feet up in the air," said San Rafael Vegetation Management Specialist Calvin Schrader.

We found a city contractor, Forster & Kroeger Landscaping, clearing a park than butts right up against condo units near Civic Center. They meticulously remove vegetation that a fire could climb, thereby creating a safe vegetation tunnel.  

When all is said and done the brush, bushes and bloom from the bottom are gone and the burnable limbs from the top are also lopped off, leaving eight to 10 feet of space that the fire cannot climb.

This can and does save evacuees' lives. 

"We’ve done the fuel management, and we've removed those heavier fuels from the roadway, there's really not enough heat to kill the people in vehicles during an evacuation," said Deputy OES Director Quinn.

Another measure: only allow parking where it works in so-called parking boxes to facilitate first responder access. 

"Where there is space where a vehicle could park, and other vehicles could still get around them and that's really important during evacuations as well as our normal emergency response," Quinn added. 

Local residents agreed.

"There needs to be access for the fire people to come and access the area if there is a vegetation fire on this hill and that's happened in the past," said resident Ed Gurka.

Coming to many communities: equipping fire trucks to push road blocking cars out of the way in major disaster. 

"One of the challenges too is during an evacuation sometimes people will abandon their vehicle and then that vehicle blocks the roadway and created additional evacuation challenges," Quinn said.

This work is a never-ending effort on many fronts and is, in fact, insurance by prevention.