Very dry fall means long fire season

Tuesday, December 4, 2007

Very dry fall means long fire season

Editor note: Seasonal Staffing extended to Dec 10th in TCU probably longest season in history...

By Dana M. Nichols

Record Staff Writer

December 04, 2007 6:00 AM

SAN ANDREAS - Fire season was supposed to have ended Monday. It didn't.

Instead, the Tuolumne-Calaveras Unit of the California Department of Forestry and Fire Prevention extended the season until further notice.

Blame an extremely dry fall. The hills here are still brown with last winter's grass, some fire stations will remain open with seasonal crews, and residents still must obtain permits before burning piles of brush and must use extreme caution when burning them.

"Most of the fires in Northern California that we respond to are escaped debris burns," said Daniel Berlant, a spokesman for Cal Fire's state headquarters in Sacramento.

This is the latest in the year that fire season has lasted in the Mother Lode in a more than a decade. Still, conditions aren't as severe as in Southern California. There, fire season never ends in Riverside, San Bernardino and San Diego counties, where fire stations that used to be seasonal have been staffed year round since 2005.

The days when California's official fire season routinely began in early June with thousands of seasonal firefighters reporting for duty and ended in October with them heading home are long gone.

"The weather conditions really dictate our staffing now," Berlant said. "We are really never out of fire season. It is just our summer preparedness and our winter preparedness levels."

State fire officials will see whether rain forecast the next few days materializes before deciding what to do next. "It's not summer," Berlant said, "but it's still not winter."

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Tuesday, December 4, 2007