By Mary Callahan
The Press Democrat
SONOMA COUNTY, Calif. — A new video released by Cal Fire on Tuesday recalls the explosive nature of June’s Point Fire, which erupted June 16 near Lake Sonoma and within 10 hours had spread across more than 1,000 acres along the west side of Dry Creek Valley.
But it ultimately focuses on the successful work completed months and years beforehand to reduce fire risk and how those efforts limited damage the wildfire otherwise might have caused.
It is, the subtitle says, a “Fuels Treatment Effectiveness Story” that comes with an admonition for viewers to ensure their own homes and neighborhoods are “fire ready.”
“Many times, the number of structures outnumber the number of firefighters responding,” Cal Fire Battalion Chief Marshall Turbeville is seen saying in the video, “so it’s very critical to have defensible space, vegetation management around buildings and around structures.”
As it was, three homes and seven outbuildings were destroyed. But “had there not been defensible space during the Point Fire, it’s highly likely more structures, more residence (sic) would have burned,“ Turbeville said.
The 1,207-acre Point Fire, whose cause is still under investigation, started off the side of Stewarts Point-Skaggs Spring Road. It quickly got away from responding firefighters, as embers blew into downwind brush and trees. Wind funneling down a canyon drove the fire southeasterly until it became established on the north side of Bradford Mountain.
At that point, fire officials called for a massive response, allowing individual crews to protect structures in the area. This task was made significantly easier by the clearing residents had done around their homes, driveways and private roads, enabling firefighters to safely enter and make a stand, Turbeville said.
In addition, roadside fuels reduction work conducted under a 2018 Cal Fire grant by the Northern Sonoma County Fire Protection District, along with the creation of a shaded fuel break along Mountain View Ranch Road and other areas off West Dry Creek Road, reduced flammable undergrowth, ground litter and low tree limbs.
When residents around Mountain View Ranch Road requested some prescribed fire in their neighborhood in fall 2020, fire crews burned several 10-to-15-acre plots between the vegetation management zone and a bulldozer line along Bradford Mountain — cut during fire suppression efforts in the 2020 Walbridge Fire, Turbeville said.
“So a grant in 2018 from Cal Fire, County of Sonoma grant funding for prescribed burning, landowners doing their part for structural ignitability and defensible space all led to a successful, less destructive outcome from the 2024 Point Fire.”
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