Leaders of the Santa Barbara County Fire Chiefs Association recently met to create three working groups with the goal of addressing major fire safety concerns at the regional level.
“We met as fire chiefs and realized that we are working independently in these areas of concern. Unfortunately, when we come up with solutions independently, it has unintended consequences or impacts on our neighboring jurisdictions, ”Mark Hartwig, head of the Santa Barbara County Fire Department, told Noozhawk. Greg Fish (Carpinteria-Summerland fire chief) thought, ‘Why don’t we get our staff together and identify fire and life safety issues and see if we can address them regionally? In this way we have a set of regional standards that we can return to the political leaders ”.
Fish told Noozhawk, “I tried to get an idea where we would bring together all the people who represented these different agencies and find solutions.”
After collaborating with community members, stakeholders, and the various fire departments, the association of fire chiefs identified three main issues to address: access and parking to trailheads. and county beaches, scattered camping and fires and other safety issues associated with homeless camps.
“We’ve found that the closer we work together on common issues, the easier it is for everyone involved because communities are so intertwined,” Kevin Taylor, head of Montecito’s fire protection district, told Noozhawk.
Taylor leads the working group focused on track head access and parking. Rob Hazard, head of the Santa Barbara County Fire Division, leads the scattered working group on the campsites, and Carpinteria-Summerland fire marshal Rob Rappaport oversees the homeless camp group.
“The goal of the working group is for all three groups to make recommendations, provide them to county heads, and forward them to their respective elected bodies,” Hazard said.
According to Hazard, the working group began focusing more on homeless camps and concerns about the associated fire risks. From Jan. 1 to Dec. 1 last year, the county fire department responded to 45 calls related to fires at homeless camps, Hazard said, and 12 of those incidents were fires. forestry.
As firefighters delved deeper into the issue, they began to notice some shunting on other related issues of importance, Hazard said.
Scattered camping was a nexus of the homeless camp problem, as many residents began to notice a large increase in night-time camping on the side of the road, he added. The 2019 cave fire was caused by humans and the use of bonfires in the mountains poses an extreme risk of fire.
Because most of the scattered camping takes place on national forested public lands, the county fire services have no enforcement authority. The camping working group is meeting with Los Padres National Forest staff to find out how they can collaborate together, Hazard said.
“Part of these working groups is to identify who has the authority to carry out regulations and what options are available to this stakeholder group,” he added.
Leaving the scattered campground, overcrowded parking at the county’s trail and beach heads was the third problem identified. With the increasing use of runway heads, access to the mountains becomes more restricted, which can be a problem for firefighters in the face of an emergency.
“Right now, we’re in the discovery stage,” Taylor said. “We have information from community members, fire commissioners and other stakeholders, and we are now gathering them and consulting with the agencies responsible for implementation.”
In early February, working groups will regroup and reclaim goals based on the three priorities to provide possible recommendations for the respective elected officials or agencies, Fish said.
“It’s a work in progress, but it will really bring clarity when it comes to public safety,” he added. “We have to deal with these problems so that people do not die, get seriously injured or create a greater danger. That is unacceptable. ”
Hartwig said: “This will at least give us a uniform set of recommendations in the sense that the very actions we take in a jurisdiction would be ideal among others. That way we would not have these unintended consequences.”
– Noozhawk staff writer Jade Martinez-Pogue can be contacted . (You need JavaScript enabled to view this email address). Follow Noozhawk on Twitter: @noozhawk, @NoozhawkNews i @NoozhawkBiz. Connect with Noozhawk on Facebook.