 Good evening everybody. It's 5 30 and we're going to go ahead and get started with our Community meeting here. Good evening. My name is Ian Larkin I'm the unit chief for Cal Fire here in the San Mateo Santa Cruz unit And I would like to welcome you all to the first of two Cal Fire CZU lightning complex community meetings that are being held tonight's meeting will be for Super Visorio District 3 focusing on the Bonnie Dune, Davenport and North Coast Areas and the second meeting will be held tomorrow night for Super Visorio District 5 focusing on the San Lorenzo Valley Incorporating the communities of Felton, Ben Lohman, Brookdale, Boulder Creek, Zion and Scotts Valley If you are from another area of the county, I just want to let you know this same information will be provided At each of the meetings. I would like to start by taking a moment of silence and recognition of Mr. Tad Jones who tragically lost his life during the CZU lightning complex fire. All right. Thank you for that moment of silence I would like to first apologize to you all for how long it's taken Cal Fire to hold these community meetings Normally, we would hold these meetings For the community in person and prior to the control of the incident to allow our Cal Fire incident management team to participate in this important meeting But that due to the COVID-19 pandemic, we were unable to meet those goals We came to Realization that we had come to the point that we can no longer wait any longer to hold these meetings So we are here tonight to provide this This meeting the meeting will be to provide you all a incident summary of the incident as well as some lessons learned This is not meant to be a after-action review Our presentation is approximately 50 minutes 5-0 minutes in length and we'll conclude At the conclusion of the presentation, we will have an answer and question period We're all asking everybody to hold any questions you may have until the end of the presentation. I Know these are challenging times for us all and I know you have lost all All of you that have lost homes your emotions are high And this is very difficult time for us all I would like to say we sympathize with you for your losses And we too have several firefighters that who have suffered the same losses as you with the loss of your homes I'm requesting that everybody be courteous As we move through this presentation and during our questions and answers so we can Get as many questions answered as possible I do want to remind everybody that this is a live meeting broadcast via community tv With that, I would like to introduce and introduce our panelists for tonight Tonight with me. I have cal fire deputy chief Nate Armstrong who will be co-presenting I also have cal fire deputy chief Jonathan Cox who will be helped to facilitate the question and answer session From the sheriff's department. I have sheriff jim heart and from the santa cruz county office of emergency services. I have michael beat A supervisor community is listening into the presentation But but will not participate as a panelist. I would also like to thank community tv For this venue to deliver This meeting to you the public And with that we'll go ahead and get started with our presentation Okay, all right, I would like to start with just painting a a quick overall picture for you all of the event At approximately 3 a.m. On august 16th 2020 a lightning storm made landfall and generated 12,000 plus lightning strikes across california This caused more than eight. I'm sorry caused more than 585 fires across the state And of those fires 24 of those fires became major incidents 300 plus lightning strikes hit san mitato in santa cruz county causing 27 confirmed fires between the two counties Cz u on a daily basis staffs 13 fire engines two bulldozers three fire crews and we have four shift battalion chiefs That act as overhead for us in our operational capacity To cover approximately 455,000 acres of state responsibility area between the two counties So leading up to this event. We have been experiencing significant drought conditions over the last several years As well as our recent weather had been had been producing very high temperatures in excess of a hundred degrees as well as Low humidities through As low as 4% over the The weeks leading up to the fires and then in addition to that we had no coastal influence There was no fog that had come into the area To help us with that relative humidity recover Before I turn the presentation over to deputy chief armstrong. I would like to take a A quick moment to make it clear to everybody that the decision and actions that we take Are based on three main priorities And these priorities are in order the protection of life Property and the environment those are how we base our decisions The last thing I want for anyone In this incident was for anybody to die or for anybody to lose their home That was the absolute last thing that we wanted to occur So I just want to make that very clear to everybody With that I will turn it over to chief armstrong Thank you chief and good evening to everyone As chief Larkin said my name is Nate Armstrong. I'm a deputy chief for Cal Fire here in the San Mateo Santa Cruz unit I oversee the state operations As well as overall operations within Santa Cruz county and I'll be talking with you folks for a little bit about our operations and Basically what occurred in the first couple of days of these fires so Starting out actually starts out on saturday august 15th. We knew this weather was coming We just didn't know exactly how bad it was going to be What you should be seeing on your screen and i'm not going to go into great detail of what the lightning plan is But we do have a pre designated plan. We call it an lca or lightning coordination area plan That we use for instance, just as this and it's a way for us to divide out geographical areas And be able to go search out every single lightning strike and see if a fire has occurred and so forth. So Like I say on the 15th, we knew the weather was coming Our duty chief Just reiterated this plan to the whole unit told everybody to get their eyes on it You know one more time and be fresh with it because it was likely going to be utilized The plan was absolutely utilized. It was utilized to a tee unfortunately We could never really get to full implementation because we were so limited on resources Which you're going to hear several times throughout this. I'm sure So that that's it on the lightning plan. I just want to touch on it really briefly And go into what we saw when we woke up on sunday morning august 16th So as chief indicated That morning of the 16th we ended up with 27 known fires in the unit And like you said, we only have 13 cal fire engines within san Mateo and santa cruzina. So you can see where that was kind of taxing and As you can see there we got hundreds of 911 calls For every, you know, little plume of smoke That you might see we get dozens of 911 calls So you can imagine with how visible some of these were and everything As more people woke up that morning We just got more and more inundation of those calls. So our system was totally strained Very early in the morning about six o'clock. We held all of our personnel on duty Meaning nobody could go off And that would remain in force for well over a month That our folks just weren't going home. So it was a couple of months before some people had a single day off Also that day we called out all of our volunteer companies Within santa cruz county fire, there's five volunteer companies throughout the county that Cal fire manages And we called all those companies to staff any equipment that they had available We also staffed every additional reserve and county funded piece of apparatus at our disposal To the point that we were pretty much out of engines To put folks on and we had folks in pickup trucks with hand tools and pumps Just going out to be able to make first access to these fires and assess what we truly had Next slide there chief So what I want to show you folks with this map Is uh, basically the 24 fires that most people never knew existed So, uh, you won't see the a couple of major fires or sorry the couple of fires on here That uh grew to be the large czu august complex or yeah, sorry august lightning complex that many of you know You can see the naming of those fires. So, you know five dash three Etc that's all within that lca Plan and that's just a way for us to track those fires. So Like I say most of the fires that those 27 fires were extinguished or kept very small On that first day A couple of fires to note here Is the three dash 11 That three dash 11 was in the ziany area. It was a fairly well populated area A lot of homes That fire was a little better than 10 acres and we were able to Contain that fire without any loss of life or property The three dash 10 was up in the china grade area You may see that and that again was a pretty much immediate threat to Uh property that but we had no loss because I was extinguished that first day So, uh, the unfortunate thing about having this number of fires We can't just put them out and walk away. So they still continue to have a bit of a resource drain Even as we extinguish on that first day or within the first 24 hours One fire that I actually don't have on this map that probably should be Was the whereanella fire you'll see it in a couple of other places I say that it probably should be on here because we contain that fire in about the first 24 hours And like I said, we just had a patrol status So Of the 27 fires 24 of them were extinguished within the first 24 hours One other thing I want to touch on while we're here since you see all those different fire names and stuff Is the name of this fire we've we've heard a lot of questions. Why is it called the cz u lightning complex? And so I just want to break it down really quick before we move on There's 21 operational units of cal fire throughout the state Here in santa cruz county is part of the san mateo santa cruz unit And all of those units have a three letter identifier. So ours here is cz u Please don't ask why I don't understand why it just is So when we have a large fire or many fires rather Managed under one structure Such as we had here with 27 plus or around 27 fires. It's called a complex And so we needed one name and so that's why you see the cz u august lightning complex So hopefully I didn't spend too much time on that. I just want to answer the question because I know it continually comes up Chief if you can move to the next slide, please so this photo is From san mateo county looking south down highway one is looking at the waddell fire If you guys aren't familiar with the waddell fire, it was in the waddell creek drainage Near rancho de lo so near the the county line for santa cruz county and san mateo county On the north santa cruz county The waddell fire was actually the closest you'll see it on a map in a little while This was the closest fire To the last chance community and while it wasn't an immediate threat. It was definitely The highest probability of a threat To the last chance community now we did have folks on that fire continuously from the 16th On and that fire was actually pretty close to being contained on the 18th when the other fires blew up and we had to Pull the resources off of the waddell fire to go help fire fire fire in the last chance community the next slide there chief so on Monday the 17th like I said, we had extinguished or Contained most of the fires the day before on Monday the 17th. We were really dealing with five large fires And it'll show them all to you in a second one of those was the whereanella, which I previously mentioned that was Basically just north of the community at Davenport the basically the largest threat at that time to the communities of Davenport and bonnie dune And then you had the waddell that I was just showing you and then there were three other fires You're looking at two of them in the graphic there That were pretty deep in uninhabited inaccessible areas of redwood forest in in southern sanmateo county So these five large fires we put 80 plus acres each because 80 was about the smallest That whereanella was about 120 each of these ones was a little over 100 I forget the total for that day. We'll have another graphic But essentially on the 17th we were looking at a total about 800 acres Those were all in heavy timber areas with very slow rates of spread and by rates of spread I mean it was just they were backing down in kind of timber understories Not burning the treetops or anything just backing and Should have been easily controlled if we could eventually get the resources needed Now on this map here, this was actually One of our field supervisors a branch director His working map for the incident and you can see that pink outline That follows kind of some roads and some topographic features That was his plan his containment plan to capture those two fires The just the critical thing for that is you need the resources to do it Which we were incredibly limited on and we continued to place a large resource requests They just weren't necessarily available Next slide chief So here's an aerial shot of From monday august 17th like i was just saying it was an understory burn and what we mean by that is that's all that ground litter all that uh dead material that's been falling out of trees for dozens Ordering on 100 years Because a lot of this area we don't have recorded fire history meaning We don't have any record of any wildfires burning in those areas So we know that there was a lot of dead fuel on the ground however Like you see the next note there is no crowning and what we mean by crowning is When the fire starts burning in the treetops. So once it starts getting in the treetops That's like the fire activity that many folks saw late night of the 18th early morning 19th and still moving in the evening of the 19th There is no controlling those crown fires But what we had here on the 17th still was fairly manageable The problem with the 17th was that some of the other fires in the bay area Exploded they they grew exponentially And those were in the santa clara and north bay areas particularly the fires in the north bay were in well populated areas with immediate threats to life and so they Unfortunately for us Got a majority of Semi available resources and it left us kind of stranded for some resources still on the 17th and next slide chief So on the 17th we did get A couple of helicopters assigned to the fire. We were able to fly the fire and really finally get a good aerial reconnaissance of what exactly we had That day we requested a type three incident management team That's the south bay incident management team. That's made up of local cooperators It's a multi agency response and what that did for us was Just allow us Assist us in establishing some of the logistical functions some of the long-term planning some of the tracking of resources As this incident would continue to grow We did continue to request additional resources um Between the 17th and 18th. We had outstanding Resource requests for over 150 fire engines that would go unfilled That was what that was the bare minimum that we knew we needed in addition to what we already had To control these fires, but we just wouldn't get it Uh, also on this day, we began to uh, we saw that it was going to be a long-term event And so we started to uh integrate with The county administrative Folks for both san Mateo and santa cruz county began to Have dialogue with the sheriff's offices and with local oes But still on this day at least in the morning in up to midday that fire was still moving in a very slow rate of spread Next slide chief So here is a map of five fires And you can see all hopefully you can see all the way down there at the bottom the weranella fire, which I previously mentioned Um, we contain that to about 120 acres. And like I said, that was off weranella road Just north of the community of davinport and uh, bonnie dune. You can see that waddell fire on the coast Those three other little blobs that you see the five dash 14 five dash 15 and five dash 18 Uh, those Uh, and you can see that yellow line Is the county line Those three fires are the ones that would grow together to be the large fire that everybody knows And on the 17th those were still fairly small and sitting Fairly well within uh, san mateo county not near any populated areas of santa cruz county just yet Next slide chief So here's a slightly different map of those same fires Uh, and just a couple of things on on here so you can see 861 total acres at that point on the 17th And you can also see at least for those two fires in the furthest north. This is a topographic relief map You see you can kind of see some land features like mountains those two fires sitting in the north were sitting on the lee side of Um Of that ridge top and they were just slowly burning downhill. Like I said slowly burning that understory away Um, I do want you guys to imprint this map if you if you can though because we're going to show you this same map A couple other times throughout this presentation um, and it'll kind of Show you the progression of the fire as a whole Next slide chief So this is a photo uh late day in the 17th I think this was probably about one of the last flights the helicopter was able to make that day And we see a couple of things from this from the smoke We see that it's still that that easy kind of gradual understory burn Uh, but the one thing that we do see in this is uh, the winds are starting to pick up They're starting to lay down uh that smoke really bend it over that does a few things for us It makes uh fighting uh fire with the aircraft difficult when they can't see and can't get in But it also is a sign of what was to come with some of the uh weather and you'll see in future Slides as the fire picked up in intensity. You'll see that smoke change quite a bit So uh with that uh chief, I think we'll turn it back to you Okay, uh, thank you chief armstrong. Um, so this kind of brings us uh to the next day on the 18th On the 18th the three largest fires that chief armstrong was talking about that you saw up in the The san material county area continued to burn towards the south Those fires are mostly burning in the understory In the under the canopy But as uh things started to progress that day those fires started to burn with greater intensity And that total acreage growth was starting to cause some concerns As chief armstrong had mentioned that we had already requested A type three incident management team to come in and assist us with logistical and planning needs So at this point, uh when we we saw started to see this increase We went ahead and made a request To cal fire for a type one incident management team to come in and assist the type three And build that larger organization to meet the complexity that we felt could be coming in the in the near future One thing I do want to point out is the uh cal fire has six incident management teams statewide And we already had multiple teams deployed And we weren't really confident at the level of Deployment we were going to get from the team And to our surprise when the team arrived it came with 95 of its Total strength. So that was a great asset and Help to us when that team did arrive As the the day progressed on the 18th that fire as I said that fire activity started to increase Cruise out in the field started reporting that they were starting to see spot fires Outside of their Of the main fire perimeter that was there Which was a cause for concern these fires had still been burning primarily in the Understory we had maybe the isolated tree that would torch but nothing in the crowns That was causing any concern for a significant crown run Um As the the 18th continued on Our map that showed that morning and this was a map you saw earlier That growth that we saw from the 17th to the 18th was approximately 4,709 acres It was really difficult to be able to see under the smoke to actually see the The actual fire line But these were the best estimations that we could get from aerial aircraft Resources on the ground that were reporting back to us the the location and the intensity that this fire was burning So for for the 18th our total acreage at that time was about 5,500 acres The war now a fire had little to no growth On the between the 17th and 18th And at that point the waddell fire had resources committed to it And one thing to point out about the waddell fire Is the accessibility even though it sat right on highway one was very difficult There's no roads into there. There's only a few small trails to be able to access that area And with that we we're having to actually use dozers to build containment line into that fire So um as the day progressed on the 18th the fire continued to push south as I said at this point We entered into unified command with the sheriff's department from both counties Just as a precursor to potential events of having to do evacuations And that sort so we wanted to make sure that we had that relationship established and that we were ready to pull the trigger if we needed So this is just to give you a little bit of perspective of what the visual of the fire was This is a picture from a global to our road looking south at about 320 in the afternoon As you can see they're starting to get a pretty good build up fire intensity was increasing And starting to to build This next picture is just another depiction looking south from Pillar Point Harbor in Half Moon Bay Picture really gives us a depiction of how Fast the intensity was growing. This was just later in the afternoon just before Dusk when the sun was really starting to go down So it shows you how the intensity of that fire at night was actually Burning actually better at night than it was during the day As we progressed into uh that that evening Evacuation orders had been initiated in Boulder Creek in Bonnie Dune and the north coast As you can see this picture from highway 236 Looking back towards the north you can see that fire coming down out of That area burning down towards big basin And then the picture on the right is just another picture from pillar point harbor That kind of depicts what was happening in that rapid increase of fire activity I do want to point out You know, we had resources assigned to this fire from the very begin We had folks that had worked double shift. They've been out there since three o'clock Um August 16th and that's sunday morning from the very beginning had worked all the way through Sunday into monday and into into tuesday morning on the 18th So we had double and triple shift and a lot of resources and due to fatigue We needed in fire fire for our firefighter safety We needed to get these guys a little bit of rest So we had some of these folks be able to go bed down to get some rest until we could get additional resources We ended up having to wake those folks out of bed Mid-evening to put them back out on the fire line to deal with the increased fire behavior that we saw that had a drastic Change in the progression of the fire Throughout that rest of that evening on the 18th going into the 19th I'm going to show you just a quick little video. This is a Some of those resources that were woken up out of bed were sent into big basin state park To assist state parks in evacuating the park when the fire had come down to When as this video rolls through I just want to give you a depiction of it The fire resources that were in there affecting those rescues and attempting to Protect what structures they could in big basin actually got their escape route cut off and were trapped in here for A significant period of time before they could exit safely That kind of just gives you a realization of what those guys were dealing with Inside big basin state park as that fire moved to continue to move down out of the park Towards bonnie dune boulder creek and the last chance area This is just a picture of some of those resources that were pulled off the warnella fire to go up into last chance To help protect some of those Residents up there and this was picture was taken around 2 a.m In the last chance community on the morning early morning of the 19th so early On the morning of the 19th our cal fire incident management team They had arrived on late afternoon on the 18th They were out doing some engagement with our operational folks getting the lay of the land Kind of figuring out how the organizational structure had been set up and at 0800 on the 19th our incident command team Actually took command of the fire post briefing That day we were getting reports of spot fires In advance of six miles ahead of the main fire That day the fire had consumed more than 43,000 acres between The morning of the 18th and the morning of the 19th a significant fire progression that occurred In that 24-hour period nothing that we've ever seen In santa cruz or san matel county in the 100 years of reported fire history that we have Slide here I just wanted to show a camera. This is a camera view of a alert wildfire camera That is located up in the bonny dune area up off of patrick drive And I just want to note this was a good depiction of what occurred and when it occurred So this was on the 19th at about 11 22 in the at night And that was a severe fire activity that was occurring in and around that area So this is just a picture of that map with that that fire growth that we had From the 18th to the 19th as you can see it grew 43,566 acres in that 24-hour period This is just a visual of that fire growth that occurred This was taken the morning of the 20th And you can see that fire was still progressing to the south moving through the area of bonny dune and swanton area So by this point numerous evacuation orders were in effect in both san matel and santa cruz county And between the the 18th and the 22nd There was over 77,000 residents that were ordered to evacuate That was a monumental task for the sheriff's department to undertake in both counties and To to only walk away with the only one fatality based on how fast this fire progressed is a Testament to the sheriff's hard work in the in getting people notified The next photo is A couple progression photos that we'll show you here. This was the Basically the morning of the 20th. We started to see a little bit slowing of the progression We only had 15,000 acres that day On the 21st You'll see that our progression was only 11,000 acres And then On the 22nd, you can see our progression had been reduced significantly to the point of about 4,178 acres and that sounds like A small amount in comparison, but that was still a pretty significant growth but One of the key elements was in that slowing of the progression was we were actually starting to get resources coming in Which will be talked about just here briefly by chief armstrong I wanted to show this. This is a progression map that we had. It's it's automated So it's going to basically start from when the first lightning strikes and then run through Almost to the end of the fire. So it'd be just a brief second here. So As you see the red dots, those are the areas where the lightning strikes occurred And then you'll see as the fires grow over the days the progression map will come up underneath it So as you can see those last few days of it from the 26th to the 28th pretty much had no to A little to no progression at all I wanted to just show you this progression map as well. This is from our evacuation management management platform that we use zone haven for during the fires This will kind of give you a depiction of When the evacuations occurred, but also it will show the fire progression underneath the evacuation So the different colors you're seeing here the red is obviously the evacuated areas The yellow is warnings and the green is actually when we did the repopulation Towards you know, once it was safe to allow folks to go back into those areas Both infrastructure was replaced And the community area was made safe for the public to re-enter It took some time to get that repopulation done in coordination with all of our counterparts in PG&E and All of our communications folks to get all that infrastructure back in place for the community So as you can see it took a little bit while here we are all the way to the 19th the 20th of september And we still had folks that were out of their homes Even even past the 22nd, we still had folks that were out of the homes But eventually we got everybody back in to their homes and currently there's only one zone that is currently Still in a mandatory evacuation and then that is the zone that encompasses a big basin state park At this point, I will turn it back over to chief Thank you chief I just wanted to spend the next couple of minutes talking about A resource the resources that we had Signed to this fire Or lack thereof And the one thing I want to say right off the the bat is you know, we've heard a lot of That we didn't have enough resources on this fire and We do not disagree with that one bit. We absolutely agree Chief lark and I will stand right there with you and say that we did not have enough resources on this fire I already told you about the outstanding orders for over 150 fire engines That was the bare minimum that we wanted because we knew that there was other things going on We just weren't getting the the folks that we needed So we agree with you. We aren't we aren't here to tell you that no, we had plenty of resources A couple of other things That some folks might not realize and I won't play a guessing game or anything I'll just tell you uh straight out cal fire staffs 356 fire engines statewide at its peak of summer which we were in at this time But that's 356 fire engines for the entire state With the amount of fires going on and everything we we can't have all 356 of those fire engines So we rely on other sources through mutual aid and so forth. So We have heard, you know, that it was Folks say it was, you know, a week before they saw a cal fire engine and so forth and that might be true Because they might not just been on on your area of the fire, but the all of those Resources that were on the fire were ordered through our structure A couple of things on this graph to to note number one So so you have acreage the containment and the total number of folks assigned per day You notice in that meat that middle column on containment that We didn't get any containment until at least, you know, not official on the map Until it hit 5% on the 22nd nearly a week in That was because Chief Larkin previously told you told you all we have three priorities on every single incident Those priorities never change. They're the same on the smallest fire to the largest fire It's life safety first before property and before environment When there's folks in the area of the fire, we can't get out of that life safety mode. So we were One short on resources But too as long as we had folks in the area of the fire that we had to account for made things very difficult to protect homes Hard as we would try and everything we have to be we had to work around those folks and get them out of the area So it just made things a little difficult Another thing to note here is all the we have the total personnel assigned column there That's all the people assigned to the fire. So there's some there's some numbers in there that Those are the support folks. Those are the the mechanics the people in in camp, you know, keeping this fire Moving forward and so forth. So those aren't necessarily all line personnel. We were we were totally strapped for people actually on the fire I mentioned mutual aid. So we had like I said, we had put out For all of our volunteer companies to staff Whatever equipment they could We did have engagement from all five of our volunteer companies We pretty much completely taxed Santa Cruz counties local government agencies are our city and fire district cooperators to the point that Evening on the 18th when this thing was burning out of control and we were taking everything that we could I was getting calls from because we had cities that we had taken all of their fire engines And we had to get something back to take care of the the, you know, medical aids that still happen in those cities I mentioned the need for mutual aid from all over california With cal fire only having 356 fire engines We have to get Fire engines from other municipalities and other agencies And that all takes a little bit of time. That's unfortunate. We know we want it here right now Um, we wanted firefighters by the thousands and they were trickling in by the tens or sometimes if we were lucky by the hundreds over the course of a day Um, it just takes a day or two for that, uh, reflex sometimes By the end of this incident I know we didn't have them when we needed them But by the end of the incident we had Resources from the national guard. We had resources from all over the u.s. From as far as new jersey Uh, so like I say, you can't get firefighters from new jersey to a fire in santa Cruz in a day It just takes some time unfortunately um I think that's it on that chief if you can move to the next slide So one thing I want to talk about is the resource allocation and kind of what we're in competition with So here's a snapshot of all the fires This is on on august 23rd and it's just because it was the only uh graphic of this that we could find But if you look at um the start date on a lot of those fires listed, they were all about the same time as ours They were you know, uh, um, august 16th 17th or before So these are all those fires that are out there and what happens at the statewide level and uh trickling up to the national level Is there's a daily coordination call that happens Where um all these uh sizable fires have sent in Our resource summaries and there's a number of factors in there from The size to the threat uh potential, you know, a number of structures threatened and so forth And there's a very defined ranking Uh, basically grading a process that those go through to determine which fires are going to get Or the higher highest priorities So, uh, you you see all these uh fires going throughout the state one of those fires, uh ended up being a million acres By the time it was done it was burned at the same time as ours first million acre fire in california history So, uh, we were in steep steep competition for uh resources Uh, I do want to Chief if you can go to the next slide so from The first three days of the fire Uh based on that grading criteria. We were uh The third priority in the state for resources Um, it wasn't until the fire blew up that we became the number one priority But I did want to share with you folks, uh, just just this graphic and i'll explain kind of what it is This is our fire the czu august lightning fire in that top row Below it is the santa clara, uh, lightning complex that was burning just the east of us in santa claire county The row below that is the lnu lightning complex That was in uh cal fires sonoma lake nappa unit in the north bay area Mainly, I believe in sonoma county that fire was going and then we had the river fire Which was in monoray just to the south of us and this is just a daily resource count And so, um, like I already told you all we agree We did not have the resources that we needed that we wanted to to truly control these and never get to the point where we got But on that day on the 16th the first day, we were estimating About 300 acres what we had we had a bulldozer 20 engines four crews and a couple of water tenders uh, if you go down to That river fire in monoray that day they were They had almost seven times the acreage that we did But we still happen to manage to get five more fire engines than them same number of crews and that was happening in a populated area as well if you go forward to The 17th we're sitting at 861 acres We had 20 fire engines that day two fire crews two helicopters and three water tenders Santa Clara just to the east of us their fire was nearly four times the size and we had four times the number of fire engines We had a couple helicopters. They had none. They have a helicopter in their unit and they couldn't even have it Because it was being utilized elsewhere Fast forward past the 18th. We that was the day that everything blew up and if you look down that column for the 19th Our fire isn't the only one that blew up that day That was a significant Pattern that came through and and everybody's fires increased exponentially. So while we went to nearly 50 000 acres That fire next door in Santa Clara went to 102 000 acres Uh, we still managed to get three times the number of bulldozers than them twice the number Fire engines a couple more hand crews and a lot more helicopters Looking down at that fire in uh, Sonoma Lake Napa at 124 000 acres. They hadn't even begun to report on that fire until that day Because it was they were managing it locally. They have a much larger unit than us And it grew so exponentially then they started reporting. But if you look, uh, their fire was was 75 000 acres more than ours. We had more bulldozers same number of engines. We had twice many crews So like I say, we did not have what we needed to absolutely agree 100 percent But in the grand scheme of things sitting in that priority list, uh It's amazing that we were getting what what we got And uh with that that's really all that I have on the resource allocation And I'll send it back to you chief Okay, uh, thanks chief Armstrong. Um, so Kind of getting ready here to wrap up a little bit. So just to kind of summarize Um, uh, some of the events, uh During during this incident, um, you know information was very Important to make sure that we got that out. Uh during this incident. We sent out 112 informational releases Throughout the incident. We were holding uh, 6 a.m. And 6 p.m. News briefings Um, you know, we were trying to get as much information out to the public as we possibly could In the early days, um, we just did not have the resources to allocate to that type of Media blitz and plus the fires Were relatively small in nature But as that grew and the team got here, we were able to put that information together We did have one civilian fatality in last chance Which was an unfortunate circumstance of this fire We did evacuate 77,000 people And as we said from the very beginning, we have three priorities life property and the environment And due to our lack of resources Number one priority was get people out of the way of this fire as it progressed And I think the evacuation of those 77,000 people Was our number one priority Of this incident was to get people out of harm's way Our final acreage for this fire was 86,509 acres 63,754 of those acres were in santa cruz county And 22,755 of those were in san mateo county We unfortunately had 1490 structures destroyed in this fire 1431 of those in santa cruz county and of that 911 those were single family residences At the peak of the incident we had over 2400 firefighters That was a peak it didn't last very long because As we started to gain containment other fires were breaking out in the state as you saw in the The graph that chief armstrong showed And we were having to actually release resources As we started to gain containment and we can make things available to go elsewhere in the state But we were confident and the team was confident that we had adequate resources to keep the fire From growing any larger than it had already grown This was the largest fire in santa cruz history As i mentioned early in the incident that this this was a historic event and I hope we never have to Have another fire any bigger than what we've already had During this fire. We had a lot of our infrastructure was Destroyed we had multiple bridges in the county that was destroyed I know several bridges out on swanton were impacted as well as you had the utilities and everything else including Drinking water potable water out on the coast that were destroyed in these fires and that infrastructure is still Being worked on to get it fully back operational We remained on this incident for months And we continued to to go out when we do have problem areas To this day we still in january when we had the wind event that came through We did have a few Spots that flared back up that were well in the interior of the fire But that's just the type of fuels that we have we have these heavy fuels They could continue to burn for long periods of time and obviously we haven't gotten a substantial amount of rain Which could be problematic moving into the next fire season. The cost of this fire is over 68 million dollars over the the period of this fire and one of the big things is That I want to preface is you know, we exhausted every available resource that we had available to us I am the state oes operational area coordinator for santa cruz county And during this period of time We were reaching out to our neighbors To each of the counties next to us And asking them if there was any way they could provide us any additional resources And several of them were able to provide us a specific number of resources for a limited period of time And we would utilize those resources And then we would need to give them back as they had needs for them as well in their counties. So You know, we we totally exhausted all those assets that were available to us So this was just an aerial photo that we had Been able to take from a helicopter on a flight. We had kind of showing the aftermath of what this fire did This was a heavily forced in area redwood conifer a lot of different fuel types in there ponder you know pines and different species throughout that whole whole entire area from You know, the buteno all the way down to the lower end of bonny dude So this was just a picture showing what it looked like from an aerial footage of the Just devastation that occurred from this fire So getting into our lessons learned from this fire. So one of the the things that we looked at very very closely is our fuel conditions So our fuel conditions have never presented us With this type of fire condition That we experienced during the cesium lightning complex You know, it's it's been known that you know fires just don't grow to large sizes here in our coastal unit You know in in around the state San Mateo and Santa Cruz counties are We're deemed the asbestos unit knowing nothing burnt here because of the redwood forest and the moisture we had well That has changed drastically and that's due to years of drought and climate change and we're having to revisit what how we look at those conditions of our fuels and and how we address those specific fuel types when we're making decisions on on fires Our lightning this lightning event It gave us an opportunity to evaluate our lightning coordination plan That plan was fully implemented as it was designed But due to the lack of resources we weren't able unable to actually execute that as the plan was designed. So That is just due to the sheer lack of resources typically in the history of this this unit Any lightning events we've ever had we've always been able to keep the fires very small, you know, three to five acres This time around it was just a different circumstance with the total number of fires that we had to deal with And then the remoteness of some of those fires evacuations Due to the increased changes in our fuel conditions And how the rates of spreads are changing in these fuel types You know that fire spread it It just really changed The mind mindset of how we look at evacuations evacuations are going to be need to be considered Much more in advance and conduction much earlier In an incident when we look at this for future events that may occur So that we can get folks out there and get folks out of harm's way Infrastructure failures With the damage that was caused by the lightning storm that came in here We had several down drafts that brought trees down It took power lines broken power poles PG&E was in the midst of trying to get that infrastructure back in place in a lot of parts of the county But one of the things that wasn't really realized Is the impacts that had prior to the fire You know when the phone lines and everything are impacted and the power is impacted Those phone lines and that infrastructure on backup Even the cable in some areas of the remote areas of the county that have it are on a backup battery system And those systems fail over time And not all those systems are being maintained at the level that they should be And those batteries don't last as long as they probably should And that hampered our ability to be able to get information out to the public via Different methods either the internet social media or other platforms such as our reverse 911 system And it leads into our code red or county reverse 911 system That system is uh, you know, it has a had a limited number of Residents it actually went on and actually registered for code red to receive those alerts So that hampered our ability to be able to help get information out To those folks So this really pushes the issue where we physically have to have Folks go out to those residents and actually notify them that they need to evacuate One of the other issues that came up early in the Incident was when we were conducting our reverse 911s Our primary dispatch center, which is netcom Realized that the the reverse 911 system had a throttling on it. They were able to work with the vendor Very quickly and get that throttling increase so that we could meet demands And one thing to take into consideration Our infrastructure within the county, you know as across the nation is is old and is Just deteriorating And you need to understand that some of that infrastructure the demands that we've put on it in different methods Can have an effect on how much information flow we can push through that those lines that are out there With all the data and everything that we're trying to do on a daily basis Um, the california mutual aid fire mutual aid system Um, you know california has one of the most robust fire mutual aid systems But in times like these where you have 12,000 lightning strikes occur in the state causing 585 fires and 20 of those becoming major events that your staff in these fires With anywhere from, you know, 2000 to 8,000 firefighters You know as chief arm shark said this year we had a fire That it met all-time history in california a million acres burned in that fire. So it taxed our system To its end it really depleted that system beyond uh, it's a it's capabilities Our evacuation platform that we utilize the county of santa cruz has an evacuation management platform It was developed after the summit martin trading and lockheed fires in 2008 2009 The version of that platform was used to initiate our evacuations And transitioned to zone haven which is our new evacuation management platform midstream in the fire with no Issues or delay in the evacuations But what the zone haven platform allowed us to do was to have a public facing side Of a system that allows the residents in the community to be able to see what's going on In real time as it's occurring Those those platforms were That we used provided for the safe successful evacuation of 58,000 residents in santa cruz county and approximately 19,000 residents in san mateo county Moving into our fuel reduction efforts Another lesson learned that we have here is You know, we have not been able to achieve our goals of fuel reduction fuel reduction is a difficult topic Here in santa cruz county A lot's been done, but there is a lot more work that needs to be done And moving forward. This is going to be A monumental task that's going to require a cooperative effort by all from the residents To all of our community groups fire safe councils rcds The county cal fire Everybody involved is going to have to get in and really push this effort To do better fuel reduction that is responsible Our individual property under defensible space inspections only 100 inspections We have a lot of residents here in santa cruz county and uh, I'll be the first one to say is our defensible space inspection program Is probably not where it should be We need to increase that which we will be doing But we really need to increase it with a greater emphasis on gathering and gaining compliance from the property owner In that process, uh, it's easy to go out and do a couple inspections gain some compliance But we really need to have that defensible space Around these structures So it makes it More defendable when we have resources to defend them, but uh in in the best sense of it Defensible structure is something that can stand alone on its own and would not need to be protected with additional resources Our fire prevention messaging Is another area that we're looking to try to improve You know, we send out constant messaging. We talk about it in the beginning of fire season during fire season But we need to be better at it. We need to get more involved with communities to to have more community meetings now with you know, the invent of And the problems with covet, you know, here we are. We're doing a virtual meeting that allows everybody to Participate in a much greater level. So we need to work at that and do better at that fire prevention message So those were Some of our key lessons learned from the fire one of the the elements that That we will not be able to overcome is the sheer fact of the lack of resources that impacted our ability to make Considerable suppression efforts to contain all of these fires So that concludes our Program for this portion of it But we will get into an answer and question Section here in a minute. I'll be turning it over to deputy chief Jonathan Cox to help facilitate that But before we do that, I just want to make a couple statements here I've provided here a a comments email It is cvu fire questions at fire.ca.gov If we are not able to get to all of your questions tonight either through the q&a or the raise hand function Our q&a is being recorded for us. We will be able to gather that information and respond back To those folks and answer those questions and this will also be posted to the community tv website To be viewed so it's both being recorded And the q&a session will also be Available there to be able to look back and see our questions versus we'll also be able to send an email to those that Ask the questions in addition We will be submitting a follow-up survey via email for everybody to add additional information And provide additional feedback. There'll be information in there that is candid scripted questions about evacuations How you received and things like that, but it'll also allow you some areas to where you can actually free type information comments or concerns and lastly As I said at the beginning of the presentation, my name is Ian Larkin. I'm the unit chief here I've provided my office contact phone number If for some reason your question is not Answered and you have a desire to speak to me directly Feel free to call that number. If I don't answer leave a voicemail and I will call you back with that I'm gonna go ahead and turn it over to Deputy chief Jonathan Cox for our to start our q&a session Thanks chief. Thank you everybody Now we'll have time to answer questions and answers You'll be able to ask your question in a couple of different ways One will be through the zoom platform by raising your hand And due to the number of questions that we anticipate we ask that you limit your question to just one when raising your hand and called upon We encourage you to use one of the secondary methods if you have additional questions Such as the survey link Or the actual email address itself So first of all, uh, we'll um, call on people with the raise hand function Um If you are dialing in from a phone you can hit star nine to raise your hand If you're called upon it will be star six to mute or unmute The second option is to click on the question and answer button and write your question in the text box and submit We'll answer those questions based on the number of votes. So you can vote a question up If there is a kind of an overwhelming question that is really on everybody's mind We'll be alternating between the two. So we'll go between, um, Call in raised hand questions as well as the q and a Again, if you're unable to get your question answered You can email cvu fire questions at fire dot ca dot gov Or fill out the survey that will be emailed to you if uh at the address that you emailed in Just to note, this is an opportunity to ask questions and get answers We really ask for professionalism And we will focus on the question disruptions are not going to be Tolerated and we'll definitely get back to an email if that is an easier way to communicate The survey link will also be made available at the conclusion of the presentation With a link on the actual screen itself And for those of you who we can't answer your questions tonight We will follow up with you and we're sorry that we can't do it We are limited to two hours concluding at 7 30 So with that, we'll go ahead and start with The raised hand feature questions first And we will start with Karen Dixon And Karen you should be able to speak by a muting there you go Hi, can you hear me? Yep. We can hear you Okay. Hi. Hey, um I'm looking at a graphs I took on the um 16th and 17th of adele fire Up on the hill teeny tiny um and um on the Opening of this 10th when I stopped to find out what the plan was fire engines were all just sitting down at waddell creek or at um waddell um She told me to move on but we you know I was able to talk to somebody who janet webb who who's the president of big creek lumber and she had told those Those those folks down there That they could get up to that fire with a fire road and they did not to they did actually dump two loads two Helicopter loads of water on that before they took the helicopter away now This is the fire of course that burned Everyone's house on white house canyon and everyone and including my my mom and dad's house my daughter's house my all of my neighbor's houses that The school my dad went to elementary school in 90 years ago whatever It burned everything so um, I am wondering why like there was no acceptance of any input from people who had know-how um on this fire and why uh, it wasn't put out when it was small instead of burning all of our houses down Like I really just want to know who made the decision like a name. Who made that decision? Yeah, thank you Karen. I appreciate that and super sorry to hear about the um the structural loss We'll go ahead and provide an answer for that chief farm strong. Do you want to start? Yeah, sure. Yeah, Karen. Thank you for the uh, thank you very much for the question to echo Chief Cox, sorry for the losses that you and your your folks experience Um, I don't want to uh, I'll try to break it down a little bit and I'll try to first address The part that I can and I think I saw Did you post a similar question in the written format as well? Oh, you may have already muted. Um, I'll I'll try to kind of take that from the beginning and tell you everything I know about it. Um, so we had resources on that on that what Waddell fire continuously since That 16th when we first had put folks on it We do have a certain sometimes Tactics might not be understood. So we Try to for safety's sake They need to fight fire directly as much as possible meaning that they are putting the fire out as they go along the line So rather than just driving Up a road sometimes into an area where They could be quickly burned over they have to form what's called an anchor point So we like to start fighting that fire from a known point, which would be down below Um, as far as answering I can't answer specifics as far as this road that or who told them or any of that Um, but as far as the resources being pulled off of that fire Um I did see that question in the in the kind of the chat function resources were on that fire continuously until They were pulled off because the fire was already In last chance the Waddell fire was not what burned in the last chance the resources that were on the hill that uh that were directly on that fire line on the Waddell fire Were who was able to look across the can and that that's who we pulled off to go fight the fire In in last year attempt to fight the fire in last chance um That fire that encroached on last chance We couldn't see at night because that was the 5-14 fire that was coming from uh in within san mateo county so, uh That moved from the north where there wasn't anybody on the line because that was that really rapid fire growth that we saw Uh, I I don't think that's going to answer your question In a way that you're happy with But we did have firefighters on that line continuously until or at least assigned to that fire Until they had to be pulled off to go to last chance. Uh, and then that fire was eventually enveloped by the rest of the large body of fire Once it made its way that far enough south and west All right. Next we'll go to fred gibbs fred you can unmute yourself and ask your question Are you there fred go ahead? All right fred uh last opportunity. Do you have a question? Can you hear us? All right. Not hearing fred will move on to crystal Go ahead. Can you hear me? Yeah, we got you go ahead Yeah, um One point I just wanted to point out is the loss of life that we had in last chance the fact that it was only one Is solely due to our neighbors looking out for each other The evac warning was way too late And I am not here to Piss on anybody. I just want to know how this won't happen in the future I personally evacuated my animals and myself on monday By tuesday morning was very concerned by tuesday afternoon when I drove the coast from the waddell fire to the butano I flipped out and called my neighborhood and knew what was going to happen and i'm not a firefighter So I want some answers about that Thanks, crystal chief larkin. Do you want to take that? Yeah, yeah crystal as I pointed out in our Our lessons learned. We are looking at our fuel types very differently and how we address That specifically as it relates to evacuations In the future evacuations Especially in the remote areas of the county if we do have fires in that area We'll be evacuated much earlier At least notifying the the community that hey you need to leave And then it's up to them to make that personal choice whether they stay or leave so We are working on that to to to make it A higher priority for us Now that we have seen how these fuel types that typically don't burn in this manner are burning so That's how we're going to address that moving in the future. You know last chance is a A remote area and you know, there's only a certain amount of Lines phone lines that go back into that area and cell services pretty bad So we're going to have to concentrate on doing that on a door-to-door type basis and working with the Sheriff's department on getting folks out there well in advance To get folks out of there. One thing I can say is We did not expect this fire to burn in the method with the Veracity the intensity and the speed in which it did When it came out of san mateo county it had been progressing it was putting up You know a good column of smoke, but nobody anticipated this fire to burn like that In the fuel types that it was burning But thank you for the question. I appreciate that. Hopefully I was able to answer that for you All right next question. We'll go to joe c your hand is raised Hello, can you hear me? Yeah, go ahead joe. Okay, so uh real quick questions. Uh, my questions are At what time on tuesday august 18th were evacuation orders for last chance first spoke of And who was in charge of putting the orders into place to evacuate last chance All right. Thank you for your question joe The question was specifically what time on the 18th Were the last chance evacuations called for and who is responsible and chief larkin So, um, if I'm got to recall back to last chance on that night on the 18th I believe those evacuation orders started around the first initial calls That were delivered through the reverse 911 system. I believe were around 9 20 To that area. So those evacuation orders went in around that 9 30 9 29 30 period of time But it does take the sheriff's department a little bit to react and get folks out to that area And the reverse 911 system was probably a little bit ahead of them So in essence, it was probably closer to 10 o'clock before the sheriff was out there to do any kind of Door to door on that 18th late late evening on the 18th And those evacuation orders come from the incident command structure that we have in place based on the information that we had We started making those orders In a sequence of where we knew the fire was in relation to those those areas And it was a while before we Knew that the fire had burnt down to the upper end of last chance Chief if I can just add to that a little bit as chief larkin just mentioned, you know um, the fire impacted many of these areas after the sun had gone down and we no longer had aircraft on the fire and Our very first notice of the need for evacuations Was basically right around sundown as that fire started to encroach on the boulder creek community And so that was uh, you know, we were basically at the point there in the evening hours remember also i'm going to backpedal just one second and to say that The vast majority of the firefighters that we had on the line that night of the 18th We had a couple of folks down on the whereinella, uh, just Kind of buttoning that one up. We had some folks on, uh, the waddell fire there on the coast the rest of the firefighters Were in the sticks they were back off Roads that they had to cut their way into in san mateo county And that fire out ran them and they didn't For lack of very we didn't know where that edge of the fire was being the night time hours until it started to impact That boulder creek area at that point It is The drive time to drive off of that fire line And basically do a big roundabout to get Into boulder creek and the bonnie dune and these other populated areas to actually get back on that fire's edge. So I mean it was a significant haul just just to be able to move those folks so in Going back to what chief was mentioning We were at that point not knowing where exactly That fire threat was because that fire was moving so fast through the forest Until we were getting the call that hey the fire is here and while we were focusing on that That uh fire encroaching on on boulder creek and uh and getting into bonnie dune was when we got our first reports there about The fire was actually encroaching on that On the basically the far north end of last chance You know there's a kind of an intelligence, you know a lack of Gaining enough intelligence on on where exactly that fire was in those nighttime hours All right, we will go next to Our first up voted question And that is about from brian dean The question is can we get information for all of the backfires set? Yeah, chief cox. I'll take that question. So We're not going to comment on any of the backfires that may have been said or allegedly were set we do have A couple complaints that have been filed and we are investigating those as we As we speak so I really don't have anything to comment on that What I can say Is fire as a tool for us in the essence of fighting fire with fire There are times where backfires are set in both an offensive and defensive manner. So We're looking into the the questions that have been asked in relation to those And when we have more definitive answers On that we'll be able to provide additional information But at this time we have a no additional information we can provide All right, our next question is from chris. There were many neighborhood fire brigades that were very successful saving many homes They were told by cal far to leave the area because it was unsafe. However, they remained My concern as a public health nurse is that my neighbors have no trust for cal fire because of this fire How is cal fire going to repair trust in the community? So that lives are not endangered in the future if there is a really unsafe fire So, um, I'll take that one, uh, chief cox. Um, so, you know, um, a lot of folks did stay a lot of folks saved homes You know, I applaud them for their efforts in in that in essence, but what I can say Is, uh, you know the trust of cal fire, um, you know, we had an extraordinary event that occurred here 12,000 lightning strikes 585 fires in the state 24. Those are major fires Our entire state resource allocation through the mutual aid system is drawn down to its absolute bare minimums We committed every resource that we had available to us Both locally as well as using our mutual aid partners in our neighboring counties that would give us whatever we could beg and borrow from them To help us in this event. What I can't say is we dodged the bullet The community dodged the bullet those people that stayed. Um, you know what a lot of those are are retired firefighters or professional firefighters that are trained To do this kind of work But if you don't have the tools to do the work, um, that can be very dangerous And we averted a weather pattern that was predicted to come through I believe it was on the 20th or the 21st and maybe the 22nd now. I can't remember. Uh, that was supposed to bring us Um, uh, significant winds and potentially uh, thunderstorms to the area which can create down drafts They can blow a fire out and blow it up to where it could have been just like the night of the 18th into the 19th where we have this extreme fire behavior with rapid runs that if people were in that area It would have killed them. So what I can say is, um, we are going to do our best to avert this from ever happening again But I can't guarantee that's going to happen. Um, if we have 12,000 lightning strikes come through this next fire season I don't have a guarantee that we're going to be able to get resources here To protect us to the level that we would need to suppress the fires We're going to do our damnedest to try to do that. Um, but I can't guarantee that that's going to happen. So What I can say is for those, um, you know, do your defensible space make your make your home defendable a standalone structure and leave You know, grab the belongings that you can leave the structure And let us get in and do what we can with the resources we have available You know, we had several folks that were in and around different areas of the community that's decided to state that Due to circumstances we're pulling our resources away from perimeter control Where they would have to go deal with something that was really Not a significant event and it really had minimal threat to anything. So It's very troublesome to me that folks would Do that but what I can't say is some of the folks that stayed did a great job. You saved structures We got lucky this time. Uh, next time we may not be so lucky All right, that next question from Matthew Kaufman When will we all agree that defensible space only matters if fire crews will come defend? And since they won't in a fire like this, we need to switch to either houses that can protect themselves Or we'll just watch them burn I can tell you I can I can't tell you how many thousands I spent on defensible space only to watch on video as crews left my neighborhood and let it burn Chief I'll comment on that. Uh, if you don't mind Matthew. Thank you for the question. Um You know, um I'd have to say that nine times out of 10 defensible space Does an amazing job if not more than if not 99 Times out of 100 and if this were the the usual small initial attack fire that had started in your neighborhood That we had a full wildland response responding to that defensible space would do worlds for you Because it would give those those crews that were dedicated to just that small neighborhood You know the the chance to really Make a great effort and a great save on your property I'm sorry. The question just disappeared. So I I'm gonna have to kind of go off memory here But uh, as far as folks coming into the neighborhood and leaving One I can tell you 100 there's no let it burn The policy there there wasn't a strategy of that or a mindset of that by any means What we do get in situations extraordinary situations like this and I'm very sorry for for your loss and and the unfortunate circumstances but With the I know we sound like a broken record and I'm sorry for that but with the sheer lack of resources that we had We do have to fall back In some respect on on the greatest uh possibility of good for those resources So there may have been resources patrolling that area waiting for a fire to pop up in that area Uh, that they could easily Uh contain and if that wasn't the possibility if you know, there was just one engine that was available to patrol there either one Uh, you know the by the time fire got into your neighborhood It was maybe maybe it was too much for the limited number of resources. The other thing is there were typically, uh Those resources are going to gravitate to where they can do the most good to where one or two engines can make it stand And save an entire street. So I I can I know that's not what you want to hear and I'm sorry for your loss um But there there's the defensible space Has proven itself time and time again. These were extraordinary circumstances And some that just doesn't matter how it seems like you could have a hundred feet defensible space If something lands just perfect, you could still be threatened. So sorry about that All right next question from blue foreman Is there any way to gauge the likelihood of another another devastating fire of this magnitude in the near future? Some people say in another one in another 100 years But I see about 100 million dead trees that look like gin ginormous kindling piles throughout bonny dune How should we realistically plan at this point? Yeah, I can take that one. You know that that's a really good question and I appreciate it and I thank you for that question What I can say is you know, um, this fire did not burn Completely and fully clean through the entire area of bonny dune. There is a tremendous amount of fuel left In bonny dune that will carry fire even during the fire. We had those concerns The as I stated at that weather event would have materialized We would have got down drafts that there was enough fuel that we would have had, you know A significant issue in bonny dune all over again, even though the fire had made its first run through there So you're absolutely right. Um, you know, I know the county is addressing some of those issues with some of the down Stock piled fuel In that recovery phase And I also know that PG&E is dealing with some of the down trees that they've done in the right-of-way clearances as we move forward But what I will say is, you know Devincible space is a key element and reducing fuels is You know one of our our goals is to get better at that and get more involved in the community to do that I want to point out, you know upper Empire grade near Crest Christmas tree ranch. There's a shaded fuel break that was put in there a few years back And that shaded fuel break if you drive into that area, you can see where the intensity of that fire was lessened When it burnt through that shaded fuel break. So, uh, you know Doing that kind of work and reducing those fuels Is going to be a key indicator of that but It's going to take, you know, a lot of effort and a lot of funding to be able to Do that fuels mitigation that that you referenced in your question. So I hope I was able to answer that All right. Next question is from holiday smith What can we do to advocate for greater resources for cal fire? Clearly the current resources are inadequate given the increasingly dangerous conditions I was really hoping that chief larkin was going to take this one because I could answer this one for way too long A holiday. Thank you for the question and um, I will ask chief larkin to weigh in a little bit Something that we didn't really Cal fire you kind of hit the nail on the head hurt him a little bit for resources were We got hit pretty hard this last year due to um, COVID-19 and budget cuts We were slated to add some 500 positions this last year In the governor's budget and all that was cut Um, just due to the projected budget for uh, shortfall 2020 was hard for everything. Uh, we have Cal fire through a cooperative effort with um, cdcr, uh, california department of corrections rehabilitation Uh, we're slated for 198 fire crews statewide. Those are, um, Low risk offender inmates that are led by cal fire captains of those 198 due to a depopulation of Prisons early releases and other uh, COVID struggles. We were down to less than 90 of those 190 fire crews at the time of this fire and so, um, the states had to get pretty creative We uh Hire back extra firefighters and put together a firefighter hand crews. Uh, rather than having those inmate crews we're entering into new cooperative agreements with um The california conservation court, uh, and the california national guard to staff those fire crews So it's not for lack of trying. We're uh, we're definitely Uh, trying to increase staffing at all times. We'd like to see double what we have Uh, chief can speak kind of more of the history Uh, going back to budget cuts of the early 90s. I forget how many fire engines we had at that time But um, we're just struggling to get back up to a total of 400 in the state. So Thank you for your support in the question. Uh, I'm gonna I'm gonna give it back to chief what you what you can do locally to advocate for More cal fire resources Yeah, I can just give you a little history on it. I'll try to make it quick So we don't waste too much time on it But uh, you know in the early 90s cal fire took us an intricate budget reduction Which was a reduction, uh, ultimately in resources Here just locally in the San Mateo Santa Cruz unit We lost three fire engines and a bulldozer at that point just recently In the last two years we were able to Get allocated funding back to replace one of those engines So we're back to 13 engines where we used to be at 15 engines in this unit. So the allocation of resources That's a legislative act. We are Funded through the the state's budget So that would be a legislative act to get additional funding for that. Um, you know When when there's no fires, um, we have our mutual aid system is robust I know chief Armstrong alluded to this earlier You know, I'll use the Lockheed fire. I was the initial attack. I see on that fire The next morning when I rolled in to give the operational briefing that morning You know, I had almost 800 firefighters at briefing that morning Within two days we had 1,500 firefighters fighting that fire Here We barely met 1,500 six seven days into the fire And we did a max of 2,400 at the peak of the incident Which was uh, you know, I think it was eight or 10 days into the fire. So, um, it comes down to the sheer supply and demand statewide So that advocacy to really answer your question rolls back to Getting to the legislature to help push that agenda for budget increases All right, we'll switch back to our participants with the raised hands And see if we can answer some more of those questions. We'll go ahead and start off with Sophie Hi, yes. Um, hi everyone. Thank you for taking the time to answer the questions And I know there's a lot of tough questions that you're trying to answer Um, everything outside of my my property thankfully didn't burn everything probably five feet outside of my property burned everything in my backyard driveway, we just moved down boxes are burned Um, my backyard basically is a forest. So there are dead leaves and trees that is outside of my property everywhere What is the plan to clear out all of this fuel before the next fire season because I've already spent about $10,000 of My money to clear out as much as I can on my property But I cannot clear the entire forest that's burned behind my house. I'm only one mile north of The town in boulder creek off of 236 So there's a lot of burned trees on the hill in front of me and behind me So what is the plan to clear all of this fuel before the next fire season comes because what if Uh, you know, the other side of highway nine burns and the fire comes this way Everything's gonna go up the whole town's gonna go up if it's not cleared. I would like to know what your plan is to clear that Um, so Sophia chief chief cox, I'll take this question. Sophia. I appreciate the question and uh, thanks for that So, um, it really comes down to who is the owner of the property that is adjacent to you So that property owner is responsible for uh clearing that property. So I would assume that you're backing up to some type of public land Um, based on your question. So if that's the case, I'm working with that that property owner to clear that property In some of that can come with grant money In a larger project, maybe with your entire community getting involved with fire safe councils With cal fire your local fire protection district to work on, you know, getting that fuel reduction done. So Our specific plan to your specific question really relates back to You know, who's that property owner and what can we do to assist you in getting that property cleared for your entire community? as a preemptive manner, so It might be that we need to take your question offline Hopefully there's an email that was attached to your question or if you can email in through the Survey, we might be able to get some additional information to you for that All right. Next we will go to claire weber. Uh, you will be unmuted Hi, thanks for taking my question Um, my question is also about next summer on white house, uh, canyon road We've we've had a lot of like medium burn. So we have a lot of live oaks that have been fried by the fire But they're dead, but they have all their lives and I wanted to know Like the the fire risk is is there But is it increased because we're in a burn area or is it decreased because I'm seeing on one hand that the There is more dried dead trees, but on the other hand The ridges have been cleared of all fuels. So that would limit Any risk of fire jumping to the canyon? What what is your experience? Chief Cox I could take this claire. So I appreciate the question and thank you. Um, you know that that Those dead trees that are there are those oaks. You know, that is fuel what really is going to be A key element of that is what ground fuels are around that area that can potentially carry fuel to that dead Dead fuel. So it's going to be important to make sure that those areas are clear of that ground fuel So that fire doesn't have the ability to get in and start those dead fuels Which become more receptive because they're drying out much faster because they're dead. So It's really going to be incumbent on Making sure that that area is clear the roadway is clear And that you keep those ladder fuels and those ground fuels out from around all that dead vegetation All right next question. We'll go to bob burlench bob Can you hear me? Yeah, go ahead Thank you for taking my call I lost my home on august 20th and probably 90 percent of my possessions I personally knew the individual who died in that fire I want to thank you for your presentation But it was also extremely difficult to relive all of that I just turned 70 and I hope I never have to go through anything like that with what's left of my life I guess I have a question for chief larkin I have a number of comments and potential suggestions moving forward And I have some comments particularly with respect to the slide that said lessons learned Um chief larkin at the beginning of the presentation Said that this is not this was not to be an after incident review And my question to chief larkin is will there be such a thing? And what will that look like and what kind of information will be collected? And when will that happen and will the public have an opportunity to participate in in that? and lastly It's my 48th year in the forest products industry and dealing with forestry issues And I just want to say if there's a single take-home message in all of this In here on the central coast There's it's such a small area Compared to forest land elsewhere in the world and the Santa Cruz county grand jury pointed out that we have the the highest percentage of wild land urban interface And I think the take-home message to all of us is If if there's a fire Whether it's in a crown or if it's just creeping along in understory We all have to find a way to take that more seriously And find an instantaneous response to fires In this area because if if this fire did nothing else it proved us that just because of fires are creeping along on the ground Doesn't mean it's going to blow up on the on the entire geography in a nanosecond yeah, bob, thank you for your question and in relation to Two parts of that is your last statement there. You're absolutely right You know typically in Santa Cruz county and even in san matel county we we tend to keep our fires very small In in size and acreage But as we're all well where we we live in a forested area that has no real fire history In the last hundred years of reported fire history So our fires take a little while to Fully suppress because we're dealing with you know anywhere from a foot to sometimes screed four feet of duff that we have to Get in a mop up so in relation to that You know, we've we've done a very good job over the years of trying to keep our fire small We've had some very You know large fires, you know, the Lockheed was just under 8,000 acres. The summit fire was 4,000 acres So this county has the potential for large loss devastating fires But typically because of our weather pattern and the great fuel moisture Recover we get with the average rainfall of you know, sometimes upwards of 100 inches a year It's helpful But that has lessened with that drought that we spoke about earlier and the change in our climate and how our fuel moisters Are dropping drastically in there not recovering I'm I'm I'm nervous about this coming fire season. We have not seen the significant recovery in our fuel moisters To date and that's due to the lack of rain that we have so It's it's going to be a nerve-wracking year as we move forward into fire season But I really want to get back to your first question about the after-action review You're absolutely right. This is not meant to be an after-action review And is a cow fire going to do an after-action review? And my answer to you is the local unit is not doing an after-action review of this incident We went back. We looked at some of the key elements that we felt were contributing factors To this fire and our one key element and factor was the sheer lack of resources So doing a full after-action review based on that specifically Really isn't going to generate any change in And what what is there other than there was a total Dynamic that drained the available resources down to Minimum drawdown level statewide where we had to enact emat to go for resources that are out of out of state between Getting those additional resources here. So I believe I don't know if Michael Beaton would like to speak to it But I think the county was talking about the potential for a After-action review, but I would have to defer to them to determine if that is the case Michael do you want to take that? Yeah, thank you chief and you know, I apologize for Your property in your house Putting down for the county of santa Cruz. I'm michael beaton on the director general services and the usc director during the incident of the cesium lightning complex fire The county is in the process of developing a strategy to do and continue to do an after-action review for the county Which includes a survey that we're asking for for folks after the end of this call to submit data into We'll start collecting. It is an ongoing after-action. We plan on happy having a an actionable report Sometime in may and with the finalized report. I believe about nine months after as you know, these take time Everything that we learn from everybody on this call We take it as an actionable item and we actually start incorporating it into our plans Including our upcoming fire. So I hope that helps answer the question With a little bit off of what chief larkin identified All right. Thank you. Next we'll go to alan lind Hello, and thank you very much for taking my call And I would really like to thank you and your crews Um from what I saw of the difficulty of this fire It's a miracle that there wasn't more loss of life and that even more homes weren't lost so As near as I could tell you guys did uh more than could be expected with fewer resources than you needed But looking ahead there is one question I have It seems to me these fires Are to some degree unfightable in the current situation Because they're just aren't decent fire breaks in these mountains But there could be it seems to me Each and every road each and every driveway could have a shaded fuel break cut back 50 feet on either side That would result in a hundred foot wide fuel break carving this mountain up into Portions that might actually be defensible In your opinion would that be useful if the residents Here could Work toward on their own properties 100 foot wide fuel breaks Spanning all the roads and driveways Thanks for your question alan. Uh, I'll leave that to either chief armstrong or chief larkin Yeah, alan. Thank you. Thank you for your question. I appreciate it and uh, you know, you're absolutely right We can do more and uh, you know, one of the topics in our lessons learned I talked about that defensible space and uh, you know, that's one of those is creating that defensible space And I also talked about the shaded fuel break projects that we have been engaged in In parts of the county, uh, such as up on um, empire grade that had a uh an impact on uh, reducing the Fire intensity as it burnt through that area. So you're absolutely right. There needs to be more effort effort and uh, Put forward for that That type of fuel work being done um I'm entering my 33rd year in the fire service and uh, I can tell you when I worked in this unit as a seasonal firefighter back in 1990 and 91 We had much better fuel breaks in this county I recall as a young firefighter Going out on the engine company and doing work on the fuel breaks making sure the culverts were clean And doing brush trimming to make sure that they were passable by the fire engines and that we reduce those ladder fuels Um, and then they would come back out in the winter time And uh, take the piles that we created and they would burn them to reduce that fuel even more We used to do a lot more prescribed burning in big basin state park Back in those days as well I know I came back to this unit in 2004 and one of my primary things was when I promoted to battalion chief was To to implore the ability to try to use fire as a tool for us and do more Prescribed burns and I've been an advocate of that ever since till this day We still burn more acres in this unit than we have in probably the last 30 to 40 years in totality So I totally agree. We need to have a better process in place working with our cooperative Folks as our fire safe councils our rcds Looking for grant funding because all this type of work takes money And it takes people and there's just not enough of that available To to go around without that extra work being put forward, but thank you for your question Chief if I made just as a as a side note of that besides taking People and money it also takes time and And We have a finite amount of staff and as the fire season has grown from a fire season that was five to six months here in the local area where those resources were able to focus on nothing but fuel reduction in the winter That fire season is now grown to be we didn't separate our last seasonals Or you know our seasonal firefighters until december this year and we're going to be looking to rehire them in just a couple of months. So You know the the fire season has grown to an extent where it hasn't given us much anymore of a fuel reduction season where we typically got to do a lot of that work and we're we're struggling right now to Make that work With the growing fire year All right, we'll take one more question from raised hand and why don't we go to Carol Beth Shannon Thank you for taking my question. I appreciate it and Yeah, this really makes me nervous. I'm even more nervous now about the next fire season than I was before and About a year and a half ago we did a fire seminar that cal fire participated in and um assemblyman stones office and but fearson it was McPherson and j d brown was Worked with me in putting it together and it was very well attended at the scott's valley community center We had several hundred people there as well And cal fire had all their fliers and everything and they really stressed about defensible space so after that seminar And we mailed brochures to everyone in rolling woods pasta tiempo woods cove Lockwood lane all that in this area and um I didn't see a lot of homeowners Doing anything on defensible space so Chief larkin, I guess You know The question is to you because I would like to know specifically What can be done? to Have homeowners Do a defensible space. I have three homeowners right around me that they Have done nothing You know, and I contacted this scott's valley fire department And they said all we can do is drive by And if we see something In the drive by Then we can address it, but we can't go on to the property so Specifically, what is it that cal fire is going to do? to Encourage people to develop a defensible space That's my question Thank you Carol, thank you for the question. I appreciate it. And you know that that is that that is a good question You know, I live within the scott's valley fire protection district and and I know they go out and do defensible space inspections I know I've had one done on my residence So I know that's available to the fire district You know the specific Trying to get somebody to do defensible space is difficult You know You may have the best defensible home in the neighborhood, but if your neighbors aren't doing it A lot of times it's not going to always work out for everybody in the neighborhood And you know, this is a prime example of this fire Um, there are numerous examples of just that where You had a house on the left that did not have defensible space that burned down The house on the right you could tell that there was good clearance around it, but it burned down as well I even know they had defensible space But the house on the right didn't have defensible space which in turn the house It was actually had good defensible space and somewhat protected the other house to the right that did not have defensible space And it's still standing so there are a lot of examples of exactly what you're doing What you're saying so um specifically to what cal fire can do Once again, this is really a consorted effort of getting your your neighborhood together Everybody I mean if this was not an example Of what can happen in this county. I don't know what is I've been back in this county working here since 2004 I've been through with the exception of one of the fires I've been a part of the all the major fires that we have the summit fire the martin fire I was not here for the traving, but I was here for the loman I was here for the lockheed and I was here for the czu lightning complex. So I've seen What can occur in this county and I've been a starch advocate Of expressing that that it's not a matter of if it's going to happen. It's a matter of when it's going to happen You know, I expressed the our concern about, you know, we're going to really start to enforce our defensible space inspections More greatly, but our local fire protection districts also have You know the responsibility to go out and do that in their areas as well And this will be a topic that I bring up to our county fire chiefs As I sit as a current standing president of that association I will bring that up and we will start to try to get that conversation Started on what we can do to better support the communities But I would really reach out to your local fire protection district and push a little bit harder on them To help you in that effort in your community And I know there's different shipping programs and things that are available You know as the county fire chief, you know, we're planning on trying to involve ourselves more in that process As well from the county fire department side in our fuel reduction efforts to help our communities But in general, um, that's what cal fire can do. We can help coordinate that we can help Open that conversation And bring them to the table to hopefully be able to get compliance in those communities to make it safer for you all All right, so we have a couple Minutes left we have some kind of themes coming out on these questions at the moment and maybe one we should Answer a little bit more is talking about evacuations A lot of concern about when they were called for and how they were called for I don't know if we could just give a little bit of information about How evacuations are called for and what the process is and what goes into it Yeah, um, jonathan, I'd be happy to uh chief if it's okay I'd be happy to field that question because I see the one from julia there in the In the questions and um I and chief can add to this one. I've done but I answered this a little bit before but I'll reiterate now Um It's not that cal fire wasn't concerned about evacuations. Uh, but uh, as I stated before the the three fires that combine to make The large fire Burned through miles In those evening hours literally miles and as chief stated before This burned in a way that no fire has ever burned in santa cruz county before uh, so And unfortunately that happened in the evening hours when we can't actually see where that fire's edge was so And having to reposition all those resources to actually get to it to a fire's edge to see what needed to be evacuated. So Uh, like I say the fire had never burned that way before. It's not that we weren't concerned We didn't think it would ever burn through five or six miles in the evening hours that uh, You know and kind of um catch us running So, uh, there's uh that in and then uh, I'm sorry the question disappeared again Like I say, it's not that we weren't concerned It's just that we did not expect it to go where it did that. You know, nobody would have and chief. Do you have anything to add to that? Uh, yeah, so, um, I can just elaborate a little bit more on the process and how evacuations are called for so um, as I mentioned in our presentation that uh On the afternoon of the 18th we had entered into a unified command structure With the local sheriff's departments in both counties We had representatives here with us at the command post from both representing both of the counties And uh, you know, we started our planning process. We had our evacuation management platform out We were looking at all the zones that we were uh planning to uh, you know start to evacuate if the need arose and as soon as we Got the indication that we had fires spotting the distance that they were spotting those evacuation notices went into effect immediately And we were working side by side hand in hand with the sheriff's department with our Reverse 911 system through netcom to get these alerts out as fast as possible and get deputies Out on the ground and other law enforcement agencies that were participating And one thing you gotta think to look at in evacuations Is the systematic approach to those If you go out and you try to mass evacuate a large area, especially like the San Lorenzo Valley If we were to take the entire valley and say everybody get out You're going to just have the roads plugged up because they're small narrow mountain roads. So In a manner we took a systematic approach and started the most Endangered properties and people and started moving them as quickly as possible. Um, as chief armstrong said Nobody expected that fire to burn Into last chance at the rate that it burned into and as soon as we heard that the fire had reached a certain spot in last chance Those orders went out immediately Hindsight looking back at it. As I said earlier Based on how our fuels reacted in this fire We are going to have to look at evacuations much earlier In our processes based on the fuels here, you know We've we've lived in an area where we've had fires, but we really haven't been subjected to fires In this type of fuel, you know A lot of it was redwood Forest that burned and it burnt with extreme intensity And extreme speed as it moved through the crowns of that that area So but that process is a combination and coordinated effort with the sheriff's department We make the recommendations and the sheriff department actually out goes out and actually enforces the evacuation and makes the official order For that to occur And I don't know if sheriff hart had anything you wanted to add to that or not or if I was Quickly enough Yeah, no, thanks chief larkin Good evening everybody. Yeah, I just wanted to say that that These evacuation orders are they're made with great care and the the program that's being used now is very effective I I just remember a conversation you and I had when when that fire was hunkered down in san mateo And you and I spoke at about two in the afternoon I think it was the first day of the fire on the 18th or so And you said, you know, you felt like that it was okay because it was this sort of nestled down and then a few hours later You said we've never seen anything like this at this thing just took off on us And I think it has to do with these fuels that you're talking about but uh, you know, certainly the the Evacuation at last chance. I had we Had advanced information. We would have been up there. We set deputies up there We were met by a fire personnel who said the other fires coming down and and so we we we did not get into last chance late that evening because the the fire was already coming down all right last Kind of a thematic question that's come out is really about volunteers and the use of volunteers during fires A lot of questions around why weren't we working with local volunteer firefighters and why weren't impromptu volunteers allowed to fight the fire So, uh, and I see that question from antonia and thank you antonia To answer your question. Well, we were working with the local volunteer firefighters. Uh, as we stated earlier There there's five volunteer companies under santa criss county fire that cal fire uh administers in the county and there were members from all five of those Companies engaged in this fire at some point at one point when the fire did get into the community of bonny dunes some of those Volunteers were were caring for their own homes. But we did still have Members of all of the other companies kind of ingrained with our own personnel staffing equipment Got for at least a week and a half to two weeks into this fire in chief, sorry Yeah, uh chief cox. I know we're we're coming up on our 7 30 Close out here. We only had a reserved Community meeting for two hours. I want to thank everybody for your participation The questions that were in the q&a We're going to work to try to get the ones that we did not get to answer and provide that feedback once again You can also email the cvu fire questions at fire dot ca dot gov any questions comments And as always you Can call my office light every foot eight three one three three five six seven zero zero And we will be sending out a final survey To everybody that registered to participate in the the meeting to allow you some additional Inputs and answer some questions in that survey. So I just want to thank everybody for participating I thank you the panelists for for being here to help answer questions And with that we will conclude our meeting. Thank you and good night