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Leaders of the Santa Barbara County Association of Fire Chiefs recently met to create three task forces to address key regional fire safety concerns.
“We came together as fire chiefs and realized that we are all working independently on these areas of concern. Unfortunately, when we find solutions independently, it results in unintended consequences or impacts on our neighboring jurisdictions, ”said Mark Hartwig, Santa Barbara County Fire Department chief, in Noozhawk. “Greg Fish (Carpinteria-Summerland Fire Chief) thought, ‘Why don’t we just get our teams together and identify the fire and life safety issues and see if we can resolve them regionally? This way we have a set of regional standards that we can relate to policy makers.
Fish told Noozhawk, “I tried to come up with an idea where all the people representing these different agencies come together and come up with solutions.”
After working with community members, responders and various fire departments, the association of fire chiefs identified three main issues to be addressed: access and parking at the start of county trails and beaches. , scattered camping, fires and other safety issues associated with homeless settlements.
“We have found that the more closely we work together on common issues, the easier it is for everyone involved because the communities are so closely linked,” said Kevin Taylor, Montecito Fire Protection District Chief, at Noozhawk.
Taylor is leading the task force focused on trailhead access and parking. Rob Hazard, Santa Barbara County Fire Department Chief, leads the Scattered Campground Task Force, and Carpinteria-Summerland Fire Marshal Rob Rappaport oversees the Homeless Camp Group.
“The aim of the working group is that the three groups will present recommendations, provide them to county leaders, and then forward them to the respective elected bodies,” Hazard said.
The task force began focusing more on homeless settlements and concerns about the associated fire risks they pose, according to Hazard. From January 1 to December 1 last year, the county fire department responded to 45 calls related to fires at homeless settlements, Hazard said, and 12 of those incidents were wildfires .
As fire chiefs delved into this issue, they began to notice spillover effects on other important related issues, Hazard said.
Scattered camping was a link to the problem of homeless settlements, as many residents began to notice a sharp increase in overnight camping on the roadside, he added. The 2019 cave fire was man-made and the use of campfires in the mountains poses an extreme fire risk.
Because most of the scattered settlements are on national forest public lands, the county fire departments have no enforcement authority. The camping task force is meeting with Los Padres National Forest staff to determine how they can work together, Hazard said.
“Part of these working groups is to identify who has the power to enforce regulations and what options are available to that stakeholder group,” he added.
Away from the scattered campsite, overcrowded parking at the start of county trails and beaches was the third issue identified. With the increased use of trailheads, access to the mountains becomes more restricted, which can be a problem for fire departments in an emergency.
“Right now we are at the discovery stage,” Taylor said. “We have information from community members, fire marshals and other stakeholders, and now we are putting it together and checking with the agencies responsible for implementation.”
In early February, the working groups will come together and bring back goals based on the three priorities to provide eventual recommendations to respective elected officials or agencies, Fish said.
“It’s a work in progress, but it will really bring clarity when it comes to public safety,” he added. “We need to address these issues so that people don’t die, get seriously injured or create greater danger. This is unacceptable. ”
Hartwig said: “This will at least give us a uniform set of recommendations in the sense that the same actions we take in one jurisdiction would ideally be standard in others. That way, we wouldn’t have these unintended consequences.
– Jade Martinez-Pogue, Editor-in-Chief of Noozhawk, can be contacted at (JavaScript must be enabled to display this email address). Follow Noozhawk on Twitter: @noozhawk, @NoozhawkNews and @NoozhawkBiz. Connect with Noozhawk on Facebook.
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