Wildfire in Paradise Ranch Estates (PRE)

by Tamia Marg Anderson 11/5/2021

 Fire history

Marin County has seen wildfire over the last century but the disturbing trend of northern California’s mega-fires in more recent years now looms large. While our coastal climate brings dripping fog to many of our summer days, the hot dry Diablo wind events in fall are often the catalyst for out-of-control fires.

In October 1995, ours was the only community to lose homes in the Mt Vision Fire. Prior to that, the largest fire on the Point Reyes peninsula was above Inverness in October 1927, before many houses were built on the wildland urban interface. 

The Woodward Fire, lit by the freak lightning storm of August 2020, burned nearly 5,000 acres of PRNS, highlighting that wildfire can happen earlier in our dry season.

PRE’s landscape and vegetation

PRE is bound on two sides by public open space: to the north Tomales Bay State Park and to the south the Point Reyes National Seashore, wildland that has been regenerating since the Mt Vision Fire. Following this wildfire, the native Bishop pine forest reseeded and grew into crowded stands that became vulnerable to Pitch Canker, a fungal disease that causes branches to die, eventually killing the whole tree. Mortality from Pitch Canker, exacerbated by drought, has created a more fire-prone forest than the pre-Mt Vision Fire landscape. Ceanothus, a large native shrub, was stimulated by the Mt Vision Fire to spring up in its path.  While it scents the air with its sweet-smelling purple blossoms every spring, it is short-lived and we are now seeing many die 25 years following the Mt Vision Fire. In addition, tree mortality has increased with the spread of Sudden Oak Disease among the native live oaks and tanoaks throughout our subdivision in the last 15 years. Years of unimpeded vegetation growth compounded with disease and drought has added to the fuel loading that we now see on the Point Reyes peninsula.

Our community borders an SRA zone, the Point Reyes National Seashore. State Responsibility Areas (SRA) are recognized by the Board of Forestry and Fire Protection as areas where CalFire is the primary emergency response agency responsible for fire suppression and prevention.The Bayview Fire Road fuelbreak extends between the edge of our community at the end of Sunnyside Rd and Limantour Rd in the PRNS.

On the Marin County Fire Hazard Severity Zones in SRA map of 2007, the part of our community that burned in the 1995 Mt Vision Fire is identified, along with much of neighboring Inverness, as “very high”, the highest severity of risk to fire. Other adjacent areas to the north and south of ours are considered of “moderate” danger.

Fuel reduction and hazard mitigation projects

The goal of the vegetation management project that we are doing in PRE with help from Measure C is to make our community more fire-resilient as well as to allow for effective fire fighting and clear evacuation routes. The aim is to make areas near our road system now choked with dry vegetation be more open and park-like.

A reduction of dying trees, dead wood and brushy debris would reduce the chance of a catastrophic fire. With more open corridors, fire emergency personnel and vehicles will have better access to the community and residents will be less threatened by fire as they leave.

Water supply

PRE’s water supply is limited to four North Marin Water District tanks of 80,000 to 125,000 gallons each that feed our subdivision for both domestic and emergency use. About 35 fire hydrants are positioned throughout the subdivision. Members of PRERAB, with the help of NMWD, monitor their functionality. 

Threats

 The electricity supplied by PGE to our heavily wooded community is liable to start fires any time limbs fall on the uninsulated 12 kV distribution lines. While PGE’s public safety power shutoffs (PSPS) may prevent some of these incidences, fires have started this way in our neighborhood, fortunately during humid conditions and so were not difficult to put out.

Fires also can start when someone parks a car with a hot engine over dry flashy fuels. With funds from our property tax levies, PRERAB facilitates the cutting of these fuels every year, usually in July.

Carelessness with cigarettes and barbecues in the dry season is to be condemned. Any activity involving sparks or fire should be avoided during windy dry days.

Lightning is not a typical ignition source on the coast— humans, or the infrastructure humans have placed on the wildland urban interface, are usually to blame for the spark that ignites wildfires fanned by fall’s Diablo winds. With more public awareness, such accidental ignitions might be avoided.