Here in Mendocino County, we all need to be prepared for fire… but do we all have the skills? Lourance Hall of Round Valley Prescribed Burn Association and Terry Warlick of Torchbearr endeavored to both empower the public, and train fire professionals, during a five-day workshop in Covelo held at the end of January.
The workshop provided an introduction to the function, maintenance, and use of chainsaws and their tactical wildland fire application. Field exercises supported entry-level training for firefighters with little or no previous experience in operating chainsaws by providing hands-on cutting experience in surroundings similar to daily operational settings. The workshop was open to the public, with priority given to members of the volunteer fire department in Covelo and tribal members. When asked about the demographics of participants, Hall responded that at least half of attendees were fire professionals, either as members of on-call fire crews or paid prescribed burn crews, and a handful of attendees who were homeowners that wanted to learn basic chainsaw safety skills and apply those to fire prevention work. She also reported that some attendees were attending to gain skills to apply to trail maintenance.
Hall spoke of the popularity of a previous class held in Tan Oak Park in Laytonville that focused on women’s chainsaw instruction, and remarked that she hoped to hold another workshop similar to the one that her and Terry were conducting in Covelo. She referenced the differences between instructional needs of the prescribed fire crews and homeowners, and pointed out that in order to perform fire prevention such as burn piles, members of the general public need to be able to use a chainsaw safely in order to cut up those materials. Workshops offering such skills are popular and in high demand.
The first three days of the five day workshop focused on classroom instruction, and for the final two days, participants moved into the field to run their equipment in a supervised environment.
When asked about the fires in Los Angeles, Warlick replied that fire is also a way of life in southern California, and that his thoughts and prayers were with those experiencing the fires down south. Hall chimed in and pointed out, “The Santa Ana winds are such an incredible force, and it's dealing with the awareness of having not done prescribed fire, and people just not necessarily being aware, especially when you have something rip through like that in really populated communities, of what can be done for preparedness ahead of time, and are we aware of those things? Some of it's just natural disaster that really is beyond anything, but we always want to be doing whatever we can, and one of the things that the Prescribed Burn Association is looking at hosting a training, hopefully in the next couple of months. It will be a wildfire assessment program and that is like a three day program looking at how defensible is your home? Is it prepared?”
The workshop was funded by a grant from CalFire, about which Hall had the following to say, “I think we're just grateful that there are funds out here to start this. I mean, we really are hopeful and one of the challenges that we're facing is that grant funds overall are difficult to allow for the actual burning that needs to happen, but the fact that we have the grant funds available to do classes like this and training is really important. And we look forward to being able to get funding for burn implementation as a means of fuel reduction soon.”.