County Fire Dept. Continues Controlled Burns

Those plumes of smoke you’ve seen up on the hillside over the past few weeks – and will see through at least the end of the month – are no cause for alarm, fire officials say.

Tim Walsh, the superintendent of the Tamalpais Fire Crew, a unit of the Marin County Fire Department, said his group has been conducting controlled burns for the past two weeks, burning off piles of vegetation but last summer and fall. The crew has burned off more than 1,400 piles of cut vegetation so far and plans to continue to do so through the end of February, he said.

Though the crew can only burn the piles on says that are deemed safe by the Bay Area Air Quality Management District, Walsh said win can still whip up the smoke and impact residents.

“What we’re trying to do is provide defensible space or a buffer zone between the wildlands and the homes up in the hills,” Walsh said. “But when we’re doing these burns, the smoke can really come into the community, and if people don’t know, they can be frightened and we get plenty of calls.”

The project is being paid for through a $287,000 grant through the Fire Safe Council and FireSafe Marin, according to Kent Julin, a forester with Marin County Fire. The project’s focus is from the Four Corners intersection along Panoramic Highway to the county’s Throckmorton Ridge Fire Station.

“We’re being very deliberate and proactive about this,” Julin said. “We’re not going to wait until the next big fire arrives. We’ll be prepared for it. This will allow the firefighters to work more safely along the ridgelines.”

The controlled burns usually begin in November and run through February, but there has been less burning that usual so far because of the lack of rain and the as designated by the Bay Area Air Quality Management District in December, Walsh said.

The Tam Fire Crew’s campaign is part of an ongoing countywide effort to create 40 miles of fire fuel breaks that extend from Alexander Avenue in Sausalit to Lagunitas, Julin said. That project is approximately 25 percent complete, e said.

Walsh and his crew cut a 10-acre area around the Throckmorton Ridge Fire Station, while a contractor, Great Tree Tenders from Redwood Valley, Calif., cut the remaining 70 acres, Julin said.