HOPLAND, CA – On a remote sun-kissed hillside in Northern California, I was adored and helped Ign to engulf the tall, golden grassy hillside. The wind then shifted slightly, and the dark grey smoke that swallowed harmlessly the slope, swallowing me.
Within seconds I was blind and coughing. The most intense heat I felt seemed to burn the only exposed skin of my body, my face. When the flames approached within a few feet, I retreated until I was trapped in a tall fence that was nowhere to be left.
I was alone in that situation and paniced. But I was with Len Neilson, Burns’ prescription manager for the California Department of Forestry and Fire Prevention, who stayed as cool as the other side of the pillow.
Just as the pilot calmly instructed passengers to fasten their seat belts, Neilson suggested wrapping a fire-resistant “shroud” hanging from a bright yellow helmet around my face. He then told me to take a few steps to the left.
And so we came out of the smoke of choking into the gentle morning sunlight. The temperature seemed to have fallen several hundred degrees.
“It made me uncomfortable, but I could stand it, right?” asked Neilson with a reassuring smile. “The prescribed fires are a lot about trust.”
Drop in a dry glass of gasoline and set it up to be purposefully burning in rural California felt very reckless, especially for those who involved interviewing state survivors with too often and devastating wildfires. But as Neilson called it, “good fire” is essential to reducing the amount of fuel available for bad fires. The principle is as old as simple.
The landscape burned regularly before European settlers arrived in California and insisted on suppressing the fire at every turn. Sometimes lightning lit the flames. Sometimes it was indigenous people who used fire as an obvious and highly effective tool to clear unwanted vegetation from their fields. Whatever the cause, it was common for most of California land to burn for about a decade.
“So it was relatively calm,” Neilson said. “We didn’t have that big fuel load so there was no chance that it would really get intense.”
With that in mind, the state set ambitious goals in the early 2020s, deliberately burning at least 400,000 acres of wilderness each year. Most of it must be managed by the federal government as agencies, including the U.S. Forest Service, the Bureau of Land Management and the National Park Service, own almost half of the state’s total land. And they own more than half of the state forest.
Members of Cal Firefighters set up a prescribed burn near Hopland, Mendocino County.
(Josh Edelson / due to the era)
But California officials worry that their ambitious goals will likely be hampered by deep cuts to these federal agencies by the White House advisory team that hampers Elon Musk’s budget, known as the government’s Department of Efficiency. In recent months, the Forest Service has lost around 10% of its workforce to massive layoffs and firing. Firefighters were exempt from reducing staffing for the Doge Order, but not employees who clear countless regulatory hurdles to handle logistics and ensure permission for prescribed burns.
“To me, it’s an objective fact that these cuts mean that California isn’t that safe from wildfires,” said Wade Crowfoot, California’s Secretary of Natural Resources. He recalled that in his first term, Trump falsely condemned state wildfires against state officials, according to Trump.
“57% of our forests are owned and controlled by the federal government,” Crowfoot said. If someone failed, it was the president, he argued.
Larry Moore, a USDA spokesman who oversees the Forest Service, said job cuts would not affect the agency’s fire prevention efforts.
The Forest Service “continues to ensure the world’s strongest and most prepared wild firefighting capabilities,” Moore wrote in an email. The agency leaders “we are committed to maintaining critical safety positions and ensure that critical services are not interrupted.”
CAL Firefighters are planning the direction and range of prescription burns in Mendocino County.
(Josh Edelson / due to the era)
Nevertheless, last month, Gov. Gavin Newsom added $72 million to the state’s forest management budget, filling some of the gap expected to be left by federal agencies. But wildfire experts say it’s just a drop in a bucket. Safely perform prescribed burns will require plenty of boots on the ground and allow you to sway behind the scenes to make sure local residents, regulators are on board.
Burn plans need to clear the substantial hurdles presented by the California Environmental Quality Act and Air Quality Regulators, as people become quite tety when they accidentally smoke elementary school or elderly people’s homes.
It took me three years to get all the necessary permissions for the 50-acre Hopland Burn in Mendocino County. There, the vineyard owners were worried that world-class grapes would become a bit of a “smoke” for most wine lovers. When the big day finally arrived in early June, more than 60 firefighters appeared on multiple fire trucks, at least one bulldozer, and at least one bulldozer, and at least one bulldozer, in case something went wrong.
They met at the University of California Hopland Research and Extension Center, where students learned about ranch and wilderness ecology.
However, this was not a school project. Fires that began on the surrounding hills several years ago threatened to lock people in the centre, so the burnt area was along two roads that could be used to escape.
“We’ve been working hard to get the better of our customers,” said John Bailey, director of the center. “But we are also trying to create a buffer to prevent wildfires from entering the centre.”
Smoke comes from burns prescribed in Mendocino County. (Josh Edelson / due to the era)
Neilson bent and grabbed the whole yellow grass as the firefighters pulled his protective yellow jacket and pants and filled the drip torch with a mixture of diesel and gasoline. Running through his fingers he showed it to his agent, and they all shook their heads in disappointment – moist.
The thick oceanic stratum clouds filled the sky at 7am, too high for high relative humidity and burnt. In the years of engulfing wildfires, it was the first time I’d looked bored and disappointed because nothing had burned.
By 8:45am the clouds were clearing, the sun was coming out, and the grass on Neilson’s fist began to wrinkle. It’s time to go to work.
The fires that filled the sky that afternoon, floating north, covered the familiar orange fire season in Ukaia town, beginning with a single firefighter walking along the edge of a dirt road where one firefighter had been cleaned up. As he moved, he made small flame dots with a drip torch, drawing a childlike line working the edges of the coloring book drawing.
Additional firefighters moved the other edges of the field until they were surrounded by strips of burning black grass. That way, no matter what direction the fire goes when you put out the center of the field, the flame will most likely not escape from the relatively small test patch.
Along the top of the patch’s uphill ridge, the fully protective firefighter leaned against a wooden fence, smoke and flames climbing the hill behind. They were all in front of this, so they trusted the black strips of burning grass to turn off the fire before it reached them.
Their job was to look at the downward slope opposite the bird, but it wasn’t supposed to burn. If they see them drifting past the “green” zone, they will move quickly to extinguish those flames.
Neilson and I also stood along the fence. In addition to the burning grass rings that protected us, we were on a dirt road about four feet wide. For those with experience, it was a huge buffer. I was the only person when smoke and flames went our way.
Later, when I confessed how I felt, Neilson said it only happens to many people when they get engulfed in smoke. It is particularly dangerous in grass fires. Because they move very quickly. People can be totally confused, run the wrong way, and “get cooked.”
Grass fires are particularly dangerous. Because they move so fast, says Cal Fire Staff Chief Len Neilson. People can get confused in the smoke, run the wrong way, and “cook it.”
(Josh Edelson / due to the era)
However, the test patch was just a warm-up act. Neilson and his crew were checking to make sure the fire worked the way it was expected. I was pushed in the right direction along a gentle breeze and uphill on the slope.
“If you’re wondering where the fire goes, how fast it moves, think of water,” he said. The water moves on barely flat ground, but speed increases as it descends. Enter a steep section where the walls approach like a funnel and you’ll be a waterfall.
“Fire does the same thing, but it’s gas, so it’s in the opposite direction,” Neilson said.
With that and a few other pointers – we saw the three of us scream from the fire painted around the base of a large, beautiful oak tree in the middle of the hillside, trying to wake it up. Neilson led me to the bottom of the hill and handed me a drip torch.
After everyone was in place and all the safety precautions were in place, he wanted me to help set up the “head fire.”
“It’s getting a little warmer here,” Neilson said.
I leaned into the torch and burned the grass, and the heat was overwhelming. It seemed like everyone else was on fire, but I was tentative and terrified. My right hand extended forward, making the dots and dashes Neilson directed, but my butt was back on the road to get it.
I asked Neilson how hot the flames in front of us were. “I knew that before,” he said with a shrug. “I would say it’s probably 800-1,200 degrees.”
As the hillside was still burning, I stripped off all the protective gear, jumped into the car and followed the smoke north along the 101 highway. By lunch, Ukaia, a 16,000 town, had billed itself as a gateway to Redwood, but was wrapped in haze.
Everyone smelled smoke, but the prescribed burns are very common in the area, no one was on guard.
“I’ll do it!” Judy Heiler said as she and two friends left Stan’s Maple Café. A veteran of rampant destruction of wildfires over the past few years, she wasn’t hesitant when asked how she felt about the efforts. “I want to be prescribed, managed and managed more than we’ve seen before.”
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