Fire watch with me
July 20th, 2008, 3:00 am · 3 Comments · posted by pbrennan
If you’ve ever wanted to stand amid dry brush while a hot wind is blowing, now’s your chance. Fire and wildlife agencies will be holding a seminar Tuesday, July 22, to teach volunteers how to keep their eyes peeled during periods of high fire danger.
In recent years, several groups have begun monitoring Orange County wild land during red-flag alerts, when Santa Ana winds, dry conditions and abundant fuel make wildfire more likely. These groups fan out across the county’s coastal sage scrub and chaparral habitats; they look for suspicious people who might be trying to set fires deliberately, as well as those who might ignite a blaze by accident – for example, by driving across a stretch of dry grass.
Among the most recent to get into the act is the Irvine Ranch Conservancy, which manages the Irvine Co.’s open space lands. The conservancy is sponsoring the seminar, along with the Orange County Fire Authority, the Inter-canyon League and the Greater Laguna Fire Safe Council, from 6 to 10 p.m. at the Fire Authority’s Regional Fire Operations and Training Facility, 1 Fire Authority Road, Irvine (near Jamboree and Tustin Ranch Road). Those interested should call the conservancy’s director of public programs, David Raetz, at 714-508-4763.
As civilization has encroached upon wild land in Orange County, wildfires have grown more frequent – so frequent, in fact, that the natural habitat, although adapted to fire, can become overwhelmed. Scrub land adapted to burn every 40-60 years is instead burning every 10 years in places, sometimes even more often. The frequent burning threatens to turn the county’s rich assemblages of native plants and animals into monotonous landscapes of non-native weeds.
During last fall’s Santiago Fire, which was set by an arsonist and burned 28,400 acres, fire watchers took up positions in the San Joaquin Hills around Laguna Beach. No wildfires erupted there. And while no one can be sure the fire watchers prevented a fire, it would have been difficult for an arsonist to escape observation.
The seminar will include information on how to spot suspicious activity and how best to report fires.
More Sciencedude
July 21st, 2008 at 1:57 am
There is no doubt that you are seeking individuals to assist in a noble cause. My problem with volunteering time is that I work 6 days a week or 25.8 days a month/10 hours a day, and I’m raising a family - so I don’t have much time to help in the effort.
I decided to look up some statistics for the OCFA and came across some interesting information. The 2009-2009 budget for that organization shows that they are paying $206,000,000.00 for salaries and benefits for the approximately 1100 employees who currently are paid to protect the OC citizenry from fires. I also noticed that about 880 of those employees work 10 days per month. I realize that those 10 days are 24 hour shifts, but in the absence of the odd fire that does occur in the county, they generally sleep, go grocery shopping, eat, exercise, watch TV, pay bills, go on the internet, read the OCR, etc. during those 10 days per month. Still, there appears to be adequate time each day, in the absence of a catastrophy, to perform inspections and other fire prevention activities. That still leaves those 880 individuals with 20.2 days per month where they are not working.
Please let us know how many of these 880 individuals attend the meeting to donate time to “Fire watch with you”. That will assist me in determining how much additional effort beyond the $9,923 per year ($826.92/mo.) I pay in property taxes (2007-2008 figure) - which contributes towards the $206,000,000.00 that pays the OCFA employee’s salaries - that I should spend helping in the counties fire protection efforts.
July 21st, 2008 at 9:30 am
I think this seminar should be required of all smokers cited for throwing cigarettes out their car windows. How many fires do these “careless” addicts start every year?
July 22nd, 2008 at 5:02 pm
In response to Dave Gray’s:
“in the absence of the odd fire that does occur in the county, they generally sleep, go grocery shopping, eat, exercise, watch TV, pay bills, go on the internet, read the OCR, etc. during those 10 days per month. Still, there appears to be adequate time each day, in the absence of a catastrophy, to perform inspections and other fire prevention activities. That still leaves those 880 individuals with 20.2 days per month where they are not working.”
-Perhaps you should research a little more in to what it takes to be a firefighter and you might be enlightened to find that during those so-called days absent of odd fire, the 10-days-a-month-employees are not only doing inspection, fire prevention, traffic accidents, medical calls, and practically any other reson an individual picks up the phone and dials 911, but they are in constant training.
Training, that keeps them ready for the so-called odd fires that may one day threaten your home. Or the unfortunate, and potentially deadly, trafiic accident you might have on your way home from work one day.
As for the 20.2 days where they are “not-working”, take a moment to speak with the family memebers of a firefighter. Ask them how many times their loved one has had to miss an important family milestone or even just their child’s baseball game because they were forced to work overr-time, or called away to a diaster.
Perhaps you could bring up the 2 weeks of not knowing whether or not they are alive while they are away during the frequent wildland fire seiges Southern Califiornia has become acustom to.
Or maybe you could ask families with young children who only get to see their mother or father every 3 to 4 days, ask them to give up the small amount of time they have to bond with them.
Just ask their family members, out of consideration for you bank account, to give up the very little time that they actually have with them. A small amount of time that is usually spent working on thing related to their line of work.
The point is, there are no “off days” for firefighters, you can ask any family members of one and they will tell you the same.
Maybe, just maybe, you should look beyond yourself and think of others. It is indivuduals such as yourself that continue to halt any sort of progress that might occur from helping and looking out for your fellow man.