Changing fire policy shapes battle against Kincade

Here's a good article by The Sonoma West that highlights some of the changes that are being made to effectively fight fires

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Changing fire policy shapes battle against Kincade
By Laura Hagar Rush, Sonoma West Editor, [email protected] Nov 1, 2019

Cal Fire Battalion Chief and Geyserville Fire Chief Marshall Turbeville wasn’t the first person on the scene when the Kincade Fire made its appearance in the eastern hills above Alexander Valley on the evening of Wednesday, Oct. 23. A Napa County fire unit beat him there. But as he followed the column of smoke through the valley and up into the mountains toward the Geysers geo-thermal plant, he remembers feeling distinctly ill at ease.

Part of it was the weather — warm, 40 mph winds out of the northeast — and the steep, brushy terrain, bone dry and thick with parched, late-fall vegetation. These things, plus the low humidity, are the very definition of “fire weather,” and the National Weather Service had already declared a Red Flag Warning that day in Sonoma County.

When Turbeville arrived at the junction of Kincade Road and Burned Mountain Road, the blaze that would become known as the Kincade Fire had already incinerated several hundred acres, driven by what are sometimes called the Diablo winds, a cousin to Southern California’s better-known Santa Ana winds.

What struck Turbeville first were the embers, dancing like malevolent fireworks against the night sky.

“It had already burned down into a drainage and up the other side, and it was moving so rapidly,” he said. “We tried to hold that first ridge — that didn’t work — then the next ridge, then a fire road — and then it was off.

“Basically all the tactics we tried to do — dozers on the edge of the fire, burning back the vegetation, trying to put the fire out, it didn’t matter. Every ember from a tree would land on grass and start a new fire.”

What amazed him was the way the fire weaponized the landscape, turning pine cones into incendiary devices that spit burning pitch as they rolled down hills, dripping fire into the dry grass.

Over the next few hours, his team moved quickly through three distinct phases of firefighting: from attempting to stop the fire to attempting to protect structures and finally to evacuation.

On that first night, the Sheriff’s Office issued the two mandatory evacuation orders for areas east of Geyserville, first at 10:34 p.m. and again at 12:23 p.m. A third evacuation order was placed on Geyserville just before 6:30 a.m. on Thursday.

By Thursday night, the Kincade Fire had devoured 16,000 acres, and it was just getting started.

Getting ready for the big one

Two years ago in October, the Tubbs Fire began in a similar fashion. Kindled in the mountains and blown westward by the same fierce winds, it raced through tinder-dry forests then roared down into northern Santa Rosa, destroying 5,643 structures and killing 22 people.

Since then the county and local fire agencies have been working feverishly to ensure that a fire like the Tubbs Fire can’t happen again — or if it does, that it won’t have the same results.

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