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    SPRING BURNING TIPS

      Fire Safe Council members want to encourage Plumas County residents that when burning, in these beautiful spring days, to do so safely and help reduce smoke impacts in your community. When residents don’t follow simple rules their fires can either escape threatening others or create smoke conditions that are a nuisance. Some tips include:
      * One of the best ways to create less smoke is to burn only dry cured fuels. It is best to let your piles dry out for a couple, so that the material burns hotter and more quickly. Don’t rake up and pile wet needles or leaves, only add dry material to piles. 
      * Dry piles will burn faster, hotter and consume more of the material, as wet wood takes longer to burn, requires additional chunking and produces more smoke. 
      * Burning well-cured fuels during periods of wet weather will lessen both the risk of an escape and the distance smoke travels. The worst thing residents can do is to wait until it rains and then try to burn wet uncovered piles, or worse rake up wet needles and leaves and try to burn them in a pile that will smolder for hours or days. 
      * Burn only on permissive burn days. 
      * Extinguish your piles when leaving. Even though you don’t need a Burn Permit, until May 2012, you are still liable if fire escapes your control. 
      Mike De Lasaux, Council Chair, says, “ Remember that piles can retain embers for days coming to life when strong winds blow. The leading cause of wildfires from humans in Plumas County is escaped debris burns, so please be careful.” Please burn smart, safe and courteously. Jerry Hurley PC FSC Coordinator

    Plumas County Fire Safe Council can assist residents over 62 years of age or disabled living in Plumas County obtain or maintain their “Defensible Space”. To learn more click on the link.

    Mission Statement

    "To reduce the loss of natural and manmade resources caused by wildfire through Firewise community programs and pre-fire activities."

    2012 Annual Goals:

    • Implement and amend as necessary the Plumas County Community Wildfire Protection Plan (CWPP),
    • Increase public knowledge and awareness of the wildland fire hazard and efforts they can make to reduce their threat,
    • Develop more community-based involvement,
    • Implement community hazardous fuel reduction projects,
    • Continue to pursue grant funds,
    • Develop a strategy to provide for sustainable and renewable project funding and reduce the Council's dependence on grant funding
    • Explore green waste disposal options and community chipping options.

    Board of Directors
    Chair
    Mike De Lasaux (12)
    Vice Chair
         Chuck Bowman (13)
    Secretary/Treasurer
    Mike Callaghan (12)
    Andy Anderson (13)
    Jim Hamblin (13)
    Frank Stewart (12)
    Allan Setzer (13)
    Shane Vargas (13)

    To Contact the Board
    FireSafe Council Meeting:

    PC FSC holds their regularly scheduled monthly meetings on the 2nd Thursday of each month.

    The next meeting is Thursday June 14, 2012- 9:00 am. at the County Planning & Building Services Conference Room

    Plumas County Planning & Building Services
    is located at; 555 Main Street 
    (The old Feather Publishing brick building diagonally across the street from the County Courthouse) 

    PCFSC will make every reasonable attempt to comply with the American Disabilities Act (ADA) and accommodate any attendee or participant at our meetings needing special assistance beyond what is normally provided. Please contact Plumas Corporation at 530-283-3739 at least 5 business days prior to a scheduled meeting to inform us of your particular needs and to determine if accommodation is feasible. Please advise us at the time you call if special assistance is required to attend or participate in meetings on a regular basis.*

    Hazardous Fuel Reduction (HFR) Protects Communities

    Historically fires spread across the surface of our landscape thinning, pruning and fertilizing our forests. Today, with the absence of those fires and other factors, our forests are ecologically out of balance. They have an excessive number of trees and are overgrown providing fuel for catastrophic stand replacing fires. In forests where fires in the 1800’s used to spread across the surface, they now climb through the ladder fuels destroying all in its path. But this doesn’t have to be. Firefighters know and the science is thoroughly convincing that if we reduce fuel loads we will reduce the intensity and consequently damage from wildfires.

    The only way humans can manage stand-replacing fires, wildfire intensity and consequently the embers produced is to reduce excessive fuel loadings. Most efforts to reduce fuel loadings, to make our forests safer and healthier, focus on thinning the forest from below. By mechanically removing what historically frequent fire used to.

    By reducing fuels in our forest, especially around our communities, reducing the number of trees per acre, reducing fuel ladders and treating surface fuels the potential for wildfires burning as a crown fire is significantly reduced. Without torching trees and the resulting increased ember production (the primary cause of home ignitions) and flames only a couple feet tall rather than tens of feet, fires can be more easily suppressed. Also when fire intensity is lessened so is the damage to our natural resources, forests, watersheds & habitats.

    Here is a recent publication that provides an excellent example of the effectiveness of HFR in the Wildland Urban Interface – “How Fuel Treatments Saved Homes from the 2011 Wallow Fire”- Fuel Treat Effective-Wallow Fire 2011.pdf

    To date, PC FSC has provided assistance to 17 communities by obtaining funding for completing treatment of 2,500 acres and is currently treating an additional 450 acres of private lands. You can review project reports along with before and after photos for those community projects by clicking on “Projects “ under Council Activities. If your community is interested in learning more about PC FS assistance in developing a community Hazardous Fuel Reduction project or becoming a Firewise Community, contact Jerry Hurley - jerry.hurley@sbcglobal.net, or John Sheehan - plumasco@psln.com. With appropriate wildfire mitigation efforts, homes and forest can survive a wildfire.

    Jerry Hurley PC FC Coordinator

    Here is a copy of the letter of Recognition we received from Firewise Communities USA for our Community Wildfire Protection Plan (CWPP).

    Click Here

    Information for Foresters & HFR Contractors

    For a listing of available projects; click here
    Revised closing date for the Senior or Disabled project

    PC FSC members

    Attached is a link I believe many will find helpful as a Homeowner and Community Guide "Safer from the Start: A Guide to Firewise-Friendly Developments"There is something for everyone, including County planners, developers, builders, landscapers, community organizations as well as the homeowner.

    The guide, now available on the “Resources for the Homeowner” page at www.firewise.org, provides developers of new communities and residents of existing community associations a tool they can use to integrate Firewise concepts into design and development, as well as their covenants, conditions and restrictions and architectural rules.

    Jerry Hurley
    PC FSC Coordinator

    Plumas County Community WildFire ProtectionPlan (CWPP)

    Plumas County Fuels Assessment & Strategy

    See the new HFQLG Completed, Accomplished and Outyear Treatments and PNF WUIs map on the CWPP page Here

     

    Plumas Fire Safe Council
    P.O. Box 1225
    Quincy, CA 95971
    530-283-0829


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