District 1 photo
By Meriah Miracle
District 1 information officer
A springtime fuel reduction effort paid off big this summer.
The Hoff Fire sparked in early August when a vehicle fire spread to vegetation along State Route 29 near Hidden Valley in Lake County. CAL FIRE Sonoma-Lake-Napa (LNU) Unit posted photos of the burnt hillside and wrote that a “Caltrans District 1 roadside clearance project helped prevent a major wildfire,” containing the spread to only three acres.
CAL FIRE LNU Public Information Officer Jason Clay said, “Had this proactive work not taken place, there would have been more fuel to feed the fire and it would have had more potential to grow much greater in size.”
The roadside clearance project was part of California’s Wildfire and Forest Resilience Action plan, which provided direction to create fire safe roadways.
District 1 established a Vegetation Management Program (VMP) to meet those goals, bringing together a multi-disciplinary team to identify high-priority areas and manage fuels-reduction contracts.
Cassie Nichols is the VMP lead and a senior environmental scientist for Environmental Planning. She said the work requires collaboration between interagency partners like CAL FIRE, area stakeholders and Caltrans units including Maintenance, Environmental and Right of Way, to name just a few.
“We use a multistep process and information from our field maintenance staff to determine priority areas for fuels reduction,” Nichols said. “We’re hoping to include most of the district, but we do have those focus points that are most vulnerable to wildfire and necessary for evacuation.”
State Route 162 in Mendocino County, for example, is deemed a high priority because it is the only paved road into and out of Covelo.
Fuels reduction includes thinning brush, limbing up trees and removing dead and downed materials along the roadway in an environmentally friendly way so evacuation routes are clear in the event of fire or other disaster. Most of the work is done by our Maintenance crews with some additional work completed by contractors.
Maintenance Landscape Specialist and VMP team member John Hackett said, “Maintenance area supervisors, superintendents and managers have been so open to share their knowledge and what they see that needs to be addressed. They do a great job.”
CAL FIRE highlighted the importance of agencies working together. “The Hoff Fire is a success story and is a highlight of the collaboration between our agencies focused on keeping the public safe,” Clay said.
Nichols added, “It feels great to know we’re accomplishing the goals we set and working together to best serve our communities.”