Berkeley fire chief: We cannot fall into the trap of doing nothing

By Berkeley Fire Chief Dave Sprague

As I write, in the Los Angeles area there are now five fires burning simultaneously, almost 200,000 people evacuated, thousands of structures destroyed, and a number of deaths and significant injuries to community members.

Our team, like the Berkeley community, is grieving for Southern California — for the people who have died, for our family members and friends whose lives have been upended, and for our colleagues working valiantly to serve their communities.

Berkeley firefighters have joined over 90 firefighters from Alameda County to assist with the firefight.

The photos coming out of Southern California are also a grim reminder of what’s possible here in Berkeley and of our own past.

The memory of the 1991 Oakland/Berkeley Hills fire is indelibly imprinted on my memory: the fear and chaos I felt during the evacuation, and the destruction we returned to.

I still have a framed city of Berkeley "Unsafe to Occupy" sign in my office that was posted on the remains of our neighbor's front door.

The uncomfortable truth is that fire has always been — and will always remain — a part of our natural landscape.

Like Los Angeles, Berkeley faces a structural challenge: We have built our neighborhoods and established our lives in areas that nature designed to cyclically burn.

Acknowledging this reality doesn’t mean we should lose hope or resign ourselves to inaction, passively waiting for devastation — or "the big one."

Instead, we must embrace scientifically proven strategies to safeguard the people and structures that exist in fire-prone areas:

1. Make a plan to leave the Berkeley Hills ahead of extreme fire weather and be ready to receive emergency alerts.
2. Establish a "Zone 0" buffer around your home to reduce the risk it catches fire during an ember attack. Create defensible space around your home so firefighters can work to protect it.
3. Invest your time and money in improvements to "harden" your home against embers and fire.

Plan to leave the Berkeley Hills in extreme fire weather

In Southern California, the National Weather Service forecasted the dangerous weather that occurred before and during these fires (single-digit humidity and wind gusts up to 100 mph).

The Berkeley Fire Department monitors weather daily and would classify these conditions as "Extreme Fire Weather."

Under Extreme Fire Weather conditions, fires spread with breathtaking speed.

At the same time, some normal firefighting methods become less effective. For instance, planes and helicopters that drop retardant are grounded when winds are too strong.

Early photos from the fires in Southern California show lines of cars in the middle of roadways, abandoned by evacuees stuck in gridlock. Fire crews had to bulldoze cars out of the way to respond.

We’ve seen similar scenes from the 1991 Oakland/Berkeley Hills fire.

This is because, in Berkeley, the constrained "spaghetti streets" in the eastern portions of our city do not have capacity to let large populations get out of the way of a fast-moving fire.

So, when the Berkeley Fire Department warns that "Extreme Fire Weather" is coming, it comes with a request that hills residents consider "leaving early" because it’s the best way to keep you safe, to keep roads open for firefighters, and to allow responders to focus on protecting homes instead of evacuating people.

We understand how disruptive it is to leave your home on short notice without seeing an imminent threat like an approaching wildfire.

To help you plan to leave early, we offer:

• A fire weather planning tool for residents
• Fire weather planning workshops, with events March 1 at the North Branch Library and March 22 at the Claremont Branch Library. See the Berkeley Public Library website for details.

In addition, we are working with experts to create an evacuation and response time study for Berkeley that will include evacuation time estimates for hazards like wildfire and tsunami.

This information will help us improve our plans and inform policy decisions about the changes we all need to make to live safely in this fire-prone landscape.

Initial study results are anticipated this spring.

Be ready to receive emergency alerts in Berkeley

Responders in Southern California are using many alerting systems to get evacuation information to the community.

In Berkeley, we use many of the same tools.

Take 10 minutes right now to make sure you are ready to use these systems in an emergency.

• Subscribe yourself and others in your household to AC Alert, a text and email alert system that can be tailored to notify you of emergencies in specific locations.
• Practice searching for your home on Berkeley’s emergency map, which first responders use to give neighborhood-specific protective actions in real time. (You can also scroll down to the Los Angeles map area to see how this tool is being used for evacuations right now.)
• Download the Genasys Protect App to receive real-time alerts when the status changes for the Berkeley zones you care about.

Stop fires from taking hold on your Berkeley property

When faced with photos and videos of the devastation of entire Los Angeles neighborhoods, it can be difficult to understand the value of undertaking projects to make your property more fire safe.

We must remember that all fires start small.

Our biggest enemy in a wind-driven fire will be embers, blown from a burning property and landing on an entirely new home or yard, potentially blocks away.

Our goal in making our properties fire-safe is not to stop a flame front but to prevent the ignition of an entirely new fire caused by embers.

Science tells us how we can better protect structures in fire-prone landscapes:

1. Create an Ember Resistant Zone ("Zone 0") by removing anything flammable from the first 5 feet around your home. This includes wooden fences/gates touching your home, mulch, combustible furniture, refuse containers and plants. This gives your home a fighting chance of surviving a fire – even if firefighters are not there.
2. Create defensible space around your home to give firefighters a chance to protect it. Start at the home and work your way out to 100 feet or to your property line, whichever is closer.
3. Harden your home to make it more fire-resistant. This includes simple steps like installing ember-resistant screens on all openings to keep embers from igniting your home from the inside.

These changes to make our properties more fire-safe can be time-consuming and costly. They may also sacrifice elements of our homes that attracted us to them in the first place.

Our homes reflect our values, our personalities and our histories; I want to encourage us to make our homes also reflect our plans for the future and our investment in our neighborhoods.

I am certain that many stories will emerge from Southern California that demonstrate the value of preparing properties ahead of wildfire. Some already have.

These examples encourage me that all of this effort can have positive results.

Berkeley fire chief: Let's move together into a fire-resilient future

As the climate changes and weather becomes more extreme, megafires are becoming part of our annual narrative.

The shocking scenes of widescale destruction in fire after fire can make us feel hopeless. But we cannot fall into the trap of doing nothing just because we can’t do everything at once.

It took us over 100 years to get into this misalignment with nature. These major changes to our landscape and our way of life will also take time.

Fire resilience must become part of our community’s core values. We are building a coalition of the willing who will adapt their homes and their lives to the fire-prone landscape we live in.

I and the members of the Berkeley Fire Department are deeply committed to protecting our community during the fires that will come.

This means continuing our work to monitor the weather and alert you when dangerous conditions arise.

It also means pushing our community to make the changes to our properties that will help stop fires from taking hold, including implementing a requirement for an ember-resistant zone ("Zone 0") for homes in our fire zone in the near future.

I implore you: Do not use the overwhelming horrors affecting our friends and family in Los Angeles as a reason to give up hope.

We can move together into a fire-resilient future.

Commit now to a substantial step toward becoming more wildfire-safe this year:

1. Make a plan to leave early during extreme fire weather and be ready to receive emergency alerts.
2. Establish "Zone 0" and create defensible space on your property.
3. "Harden" your home to make it more fire-resistant.

Visit BerkeleyFireSafe.org for more about wildfire science as well as guidelines and programs to support you in taking these steps.

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