Fire and Fire History/Management

Introduction

This chapter addresses the history of fire and fire management within the Big Chico Creek watershed. It also summarizes the urban and wildland fire response systems in place within the watershed.

Area Overview

Big Chico Creek originates on Lassen National Forestlands on the southern slopes of conifer-covered Colby Mountain, 40 creek-miles northeast of the City of Chico at an elevation of about 6,000 ft. It enters the Sacramento River at river-mile 193, 5 miles west of Chico at an elevation of about 120 ft. The watershed reflects this 5,880 ft. elevation change with a diversity of vegetation types that includes members of nearly every plant series found in the Sierra Nevada Foothills. Plant series are used to describe groups of associated plant communities, and series are named for the species that dominate the vegetation. Some examples found within the watershed include the blue oak, interior live oak shrub, and ponderosa pine series. Each series has its own unique characteristics when it comes to flammability and density of vegetation per acre, and these attributes have a major impact on the intensity of a wildfire burning in any given vegetation type. In general, annual precipitation increases and average temperature decreases in direct relationship to elevation in the watershed, and these factors are the dominant mechanisms affecting the distribution of plant series types within the watershed (USDA Forest Service, Ecological Subregions of California, 1997).

A drive up Highway 32 or the Cohasset Highway, with their constant increase in elevation, provides an excellent introduction to the distribution of Foothill vegetation types. Starting from Bruce Road on Highway 32 or around the Airport on the Cohasset Highway, the grasslands of the lowest slopes of the foothills gradually begin to include scattered patches of blue oak, and within 2 or 3 miles, gray pine and live oak are present in the gullies. As precipitation increases with elevation, the size of the brush increases as well. Within 4 miles of Bruce Road (Highway 32), or within 6 miles of the Airport (Cohasset Highway), you have climbed 1,000 feet, and are well into the "chaparral" zone.

In the Big Chico Creek Watershed, "chaparral" describes a plant series dominated by brushy plants such as manzanita, whitethorn, and scrub and live oaks. These types of brush coincide with a wet-in-the-winter, dry-in-the-summer, Mediterranean climate. Throughout the Sierra Nevada Foothills, the chaparral occurs in the transition between the grasslands and oak woodlands of the lower elevations and the conifer forests of the wetter, cooler, higher elevation slopes. Chaparral vegetation is highly influenced by the aspect, or direction that a slope faces. On south facing slopes, where there is little competition for sunlight, the brush tends to grow denser and with a lower canopy. On north facing, shady slopes, increased competition for available light results in a taller canopy. Here easily ignited grass and brushy fuels intermix beneath gray pine and dense stands of oak to form a multiple-storied and highly flammable landscape. Chaparral plant communities have evolved in conjunction with frequent fires, and historically, this vegetation type has burned regularly.

In the Big Chico Creek Watershed, the chaparral zone is found starting around the Keefer Road turnoff from the Cohasset Highway, in the gullies above Horseshoe Lake and the golf course in Upper Bidwell Park, and about 4 miles above Bruce Road on Highway 32. On the Vegetation Map in the Appendix, this zone shows up where the Shrub, Montane Hardwood, and Oak Woodland classifications intermix. Within the lower and middle reaches of the watershed, the south facing walls of many of the small ravines and the Big Chico Creek, Rock Creek, and Mud Creek Canyons are covered with a mixture of brush, gray pine, and oak. The shadier north facing slopes tend to be covered with similar types of vegetation, but have a taller canopy. In areas such as Upper Bidwell Park, the amount of fuel per acre is much higher on the north facing slopes because of this.

The "chaparral" and conifevegetation types meet at the edge of the canyon rim.
By Zeke Lunder

At an elevation of around 2,000 ft. there is a fairly dramatic increase in annual precipitation, and the corresponding increase in weathering has helped to create the deep and well-drained soils of the ridgetops. The deeply weathered soils found on the ridgetops around the towns of Forest Ranch and Cohasset are recognized as having some of the highest site-productivity for forestland in the state, and are predominately covered with mixed-conifer pine forests. (Conlin, personal communication, 1998) The effects of slope and precipitation on vegetation type and size are readily apparent where the steep canyon walls meet the flat ridgetops. A good example of this can be found about a mile and a half south of Forest Ranch, where the highway leaves the narrow ridge between Big and Little Chico Creeks and climbs onto the top of the widening ridge. A similar vegetation break occurs on the Cohasset Highway about ½ a mile south of Vilas

Road where the road leaves the canyon of the Anderson Fork of Rock Creek and climbs into the flatter forestlands of Cohasset Ridge. In these areas, vigorous ponderosa pine, douglas fir, and black oak enjoy the deeper soils of the flat ridgetop. This rapid transition from oak woodland and chaparral to a mixed-conifer forest illustrates the variability of fuel types and fuel densities within the watershed.

A continuous loading of fuel from the forest floor to the crowns of the tallest trees makes these junctions of chaparral and conifer forest critical zones when it comes to fuel planning. An example of this fuel combination can be seen just below the trailer park on Cohasset Road, about 1 mile north of Vilas Road, or 1.5 miles south of Forest Ranch on the east side of Highway 32. Here, 6-8 foot tall manzanita bushes are growing densely below mixed-age ponderosa pine. Under the quite common late-summer combinations of low fuel-moisture and afternoon upslope winds, these zones represent an area in which brush fires burning up from the canyons can move into the upper canopy of conifer forests on the ridgetops. If the canopy of the conifer forest is of sufficient density, the fire can burn through the forest, leaping from crown to crown of the trees. This is called a "crown fire". Crown fires occur when there is a continuous column of fire from the ground level to the tops of the larger trees. Initially, crown fires can't burn without thick fuels in the understory, as without these there is usually insufficient heat to dry and ignite the wet needles and branches in the canopy of adjacent trees.

Once a fire has established itself in the crowns, however, it can generate sufficient heat to ignite adjacent trees.

Since the turn of the century, Californians have been aggressively suppressing fire, and this activity, coupled with the selective harvest of conifer trees, has resulted in a landscape that has a much higher density of fuel per acre than it had 100 years ago. The selective harvest or "overstory removal" of the larger trees in the forest has the effect of opening up the canopy of the forest and letting more light shine down on the forest floor. This increases the viability of tree seedlings, which leads to more trees per acre. Historically, low intensity wildfires would periodically burn through the forestlands, killing small, suppressed trees while leaving the taller trees unburned. Now that this natural "weeding" mechanism is gone, the suppressed understory trees are able to grow up below the crowns of the larger trees, creating a "fire ladder" effect which can easily deliver small ground fires up into the crowns of the larger trees.

Crown fires usually burn with "stand-replacing" intensity. "Stand-replacing," describes fires that burn and kill all of the trees within a given area. The large columns of smoke and superheated air rising off of a large crown fire can have a major influence on local weather conditions; creating strong hot winds which preheat adjacent fuels and accelerate the spread of the fire. The intensity at which these fires burn makes them very difficult to extinguish.

Recent Fire History

The attached Fire History Map shows fires greater than 300 acres that have occurred within the area in the last 100 years. If the reader of this document notices missing fires that fit this description, please call Jeff Harter at the Oroville CDF office (538-7111). Data for the map was taken from CDF fire reports dating back to the 1950's and from the United States Geological Survey National Aerial Photography Program, which flies high altitude photo flights of the entire U.S. every 5 years. The US Forest Service provided information on fires occurring before the 1950s.

Historically, fires were started by Native Americans and by lightning. Native Americans started fires for hunting purposes to kill acorn worms in acorns that were on the ground and to make travel through the wildlands easier. The many overlapping fires within the Ishi Wilderness area west of Campbellville are the product of lighting strikes, powerline failures, and other human caused ignitions. This area is in a drier climatic zone than that of the Big Chico Creek watershed and has few roads for firefighter access. Some areas within the Ishi wilderness area have burned seven times in this century. The large fire that covered this region most recently is the Campbell fire, which burned 131,000 acres in 1990.

Looking at the distribution of fire throughout the decades, perhaps more important than areas that have burned are the areas that have not. Aside from the fires that occurred in the Campbell Creek area in the 1950s, most of the area within the main canyon of Big Chico Creek has not burned catastrophically since the 1910s or 1920s. That the entire area between Forest Ranch and Cohasset is white on the map might lead to questions about when this area will burn. Natural ignitions from lightning tend to start fires atop ridges, but historically, once these fires took off, many of them carried down into adjacent canyons. Examples of this behavior are seen in many of the larger fires on the Fire History map, and in the "Bidwell Fire" of the 1980s. This fire was started by powerlines near the junction of Humboldt Road and Highway 32 and burned down across Little Chico Creek, up Doe Mill Ridge, and then down into Butte Creek Canyon. Notice that many of the fires on the Fire History map that follow waterways such as Pine Creek, Rock Creek, and Campbell Creek are elongate with the direction of the creek's flow. The large 1910s fire that started low on Rock Creek and the 1950s fire on Campbell Creek are good examples of fires that spread upstream. This might indicate that fires ignited in the valley or in the Bidwell Park area could have burned up the canyons.

Limited access to Big Chico Creek canyon above Bidwell Park may be one of the reasons that the area has not burned recently, and the recent addition of gates on many of the private roads in the area further decreases the risk of ignition. Decreased ignition risk is not necessarily equated with long-term benefits though, as it can only add to an already heavy level of fuel loading.

Wildfire Suppression

Butte County has contracted the services of CDF since 1931 to provide unincorporated areas with structural and wildland fire protection, technical rescue, and basic life support through the Butte County Fire Department (BCFD). Combined, CDF and the BCFD operate 42 Fire Stations, 65 Engines, 1 Airbase, 1 Fire Center, approximately 100 career personnel, 160 seasonal employees, and approximately 455 volunteers at 21 volunteer fire companies. Through the Interagency Emergency Command Center (ECC) in Oroville, CDF/BCFD acts as the 911 dispatching center for all non-law enforcement emergency services in Butte County, an area is referred to as the Butte Ranger Unit (BTU) (Hawkins, personal communication, 1998).

Effective fire suppression requires the coordination of many different resources. In an aggressive initial attack on a fire, aircraft, engines, bulldozers and fire-crews all play a vital role. However, each wildland fire situation is different, and in some cases, one resource can play a more important role than the others. For example, it is difficult to run a bulldozer on many of the mudflow slopes of the foothills as the "lavacap" is steep, rocky, and interrupted by numerous gullies. To effectively link the broken lines cut by bulldozers here, hand crews are needed, but as many areas within the watershed haven't burned in the last 100 years, thick accumulations of fuel, coupled with upslope afternoon winds that are typical during fire season make many of the foothill slopes very dangerous places to deploy hand crews without the support of airtankers to slow the spread of the fire(McAdams, personal communication, 1998).

Water Availability

Cohasset Area

In many of the upland areas, water can be hard to find. Cohasset station personnel can fill their engines and water tenders from 10,000-gallon tanks at the CDF or volunteer stations, but these tanks are refilled by pumps that run only at 20-30 gallons per minute. There is a drafting pit for engines and water tenders on Maple Creek at the old CDF station on Vilas Road, and several private ponds in the Cohasset area. Above Cohasset, there are fewer sources, and many of Big Chico Creek's tributaries, such as Campbell Creek, can dry up in the summer. There is a 5,000-gallon water tank at Cold Spring on Cold Spring Hill at the top of the 150 G Line. Above this point, as the H-Line follows the ridgeline between Deer and Big Chico Creeks, there are few water sources, and water tenders must go down the H-Line to Big Chico Creek at Soda Springs.

Forest Ranch Area

Around the Forest Ranch area, there is a 10,000 gallon water tank at the CDF station, 3 10,000-gallon tanks at the volunteer station, a 4,600-gallon tank off of Headwaters Road, 65,000 gallons in tanks at the Humboldt Woodlands subdivision below Forest Ranch on Highway 32, and 30,000 gallons at the Humboldt Highlands subdivision at 14 Mile House. There is also a 50,000-gallon reservoir at the Forest Knolls Tract in Forest Ranch. These tanks are all on wells, and take many hours to refill. There is a water tank at the Forest Ranch School, and some of the private landowners in the area have ponds or tanks that CDF can use (Marcum, personal communication, 1998).

Access

Firefighter response times in the watershed reflect the topography and the distribution of human habitation. As most recreation and resource related activity occurs close to transportation corridors, most human-caused fires occur in areas that are accessible to firefighters and their equipment. There is little human habitation in the upper watershed of Big Chico Creek above Campbellville. This decreases the risks of ignition in these areas, but also means that detection of and response to fires in these areas will be slower. In many cases, a fire caused by woodcutters or logging equipment will get a quick enough response to keep it relatively small. Naturally ignited (lightning) fires often occur in remote areas and access problems can give the fire a chance to establish itself before suppression efforts can begin.

On the ridgetops along both sides of Big Chico Creek, much of the area above Ponderosa Way and extending northward to the top of the watershed is managed for industrial timber production and is heavily roaded. The landscape here is characterized by flat ridgetops covered in conifer forests, which are cut by the steep tributaries to Big Chico Creek. The main canyon of Big Chico Creek above the 150 G Line features slopes covered with Pine, Fir, and Oak forests. Sierra Pacific Industries (SPI) owns or manages most of this land, and their predecessors, Diamond Lands, built an extensive network of railroad grades for log-hauling trains in the early part of this century. These grades became the arterial routes when they were converted to haul roads for log trucks. Many spur roads branch off of these main roads, and these provide good access for fire equipment to the flatter areas of the upper watershed.

Topography, resource values, and road density are related, as many of the canyon walls are too precipitous for road building, or are lacking in merchantable timber, which would justify the construction of logging roads. The areas lacking roads are places where a slowed response can give a fire the chance to establish itself before any suppression can take place. The few roads that access the bottom of the canyon are narrow with tight corners, with few or no turnaround points. These are dangerous areas within which to deploy fire equipment. Fire equipment can easily become trapped in the path of the fire if vehicles are unable to turn around or if equipment above them becomes stalled or stuck.

There are few roads that access the bottom of Big Chico Creek Canyon between the end of Upper Bidwell Park and Highway 32, nearly 20 miles upstream. Access points from Highway 32 for Forest Ranch firefighters include: The "Greengate" Road at "10-Mile House" off of Highway 32, the "14-Mile House" Road, Ponderosa Way from Forest Ranch to Cohasset, the "150 G Line", which runs from Highway 32 down to Big Chico Creek, and then up Campbell Creek to the "H-Line", and the "90 G Line", which leaves Highway 32 one mile south of Lomo and accesses the area south of where Nine-Mile Creek enters Big Chico Creek. The only accesses to the bottom of the canyon for Cohasset firefighters are Ponderosa Way and the "150 G Line". Ponderosa Way is in very poor condition, and fire engines must travel very slowly over it. Bulldozer transports can't negotiate the road and bulldozers must be brought in on the ground (Kielhorn, personal communication, 1998). (Fire History map has road names on it.)

Bidwell Park

The City of Chico Fire Department (Chico FD) is responsible for an initial attack on all fires originating within Bidwell Park. If a fire is reported which poses a threat to the CDF State Responsibility Area, the Butte County Fire/CDF Emergency Command Center (ECC) in Oroville will dispatch CDF resources. It takes at least 20 minutes for a Chico City engine to reach the bottom of the canyon on the "Greengate" Road off of Highway 32 at the northeastern end of Upper Park. City engines responding from Station 1 on Salem Street take 15 minutes to reach the end of the Upper Park Road, and the construction of the new station at Wildwood and Manzanita Avenues will cut five to seven minutes off of this time. For rescues and time-critical medical calls to these areas, a CDF or Butte County Sheriff's Department Search and Rescue helicopter may be dispatched.

The north portion of the park running along the Upper Park Road is considered to be the area at greatest risk of ignition due to its dry fuels and heavy use. There is good access to the base of the north side of the canyon, and the north rim trail has historically been maintained as a fire road and can still be used by CDF. The road has been widened in many places by erosion and can be used as a firebreak. The fuels are generally thicker on the north-facing slopes of the South Rim, but less use here means that there is a lower threat of ignition. (Beardsley, personal communication, 1998) Public acquisition of the Simmons Ranch property in the area north of Upper Park raises issues relating to the impacts of increased human access on wildfire ignition risk (Harter, personal communication, 1998).

As City-owned wildlands within Bidwell Park are protected by the Chico FD, their lack of specialized wildland firefighting equipment is an issue of concern. The city has no bulldozers, large water tenders, aircraft, or fire crews. These resources are available through mutual-aid from CDF/BCFD, but they are not automatically dispatched to fires occurring within the park.

Canyons

The canyons of Big Chico Creek and its tributaries are as deep as 1,000 feet below the ridgetops in some places, and the steep canyon walls present many obstacles to firefighting equipment. In the lower to middle stretches of the canyon, the steep walls are often covered with chaparral and other fire-adapted vegetation that is thicker now than it was before European settlement and the suppression of wildfire. The steep slopes of the canyons make it difficult if not impossible to engage in fuel modification (brush thinning) as well. There are few safe ways to thin the chaparral vegetation in many of the steep areas within the canyons.

There are few roads that access the steep slopes of Big Chico Creek Canyon between the end of Upper Bidwell Park and Highway 32, nearly 20 miles upstream. By Zeke Lunder

On the steepest slopes of the canyons, the usefulness of bulldozers to construct a fireline is minimal, and airtankers are unable to fly low enough to attack fires directly, and must "stairstep" bands of retardant along the canyon walls as low as they can fly. In these areas, helicopters with large "monsoon" buckets are the most effective equipment. Their usefulness is limited by access to deep, calm pools, as moving water can fill the bucket and drag a helicopter down. The ponds at California Park, Horseshoe Lake, and ponds around Cohasset are all bodies of water from which the helicopters can fill their buckets. Winds and powerlines are factors that can restrict the usefulness of aircraft, especially in the canyons. In Upper Bidwell Park the powerlines limit the usefulness of airtankers because the pilots like to drop their retardant while headed down toward the valley. While a rapid response by helicopters and airtankers can slow the spread of a fire, containing a blaze usually requires hand-crews that will have to hike into the area (Davis, personal communication, 1998).

The west-facing canyon walls below the town of Forest Ranch are vegetated with a thick cover of chaparral that is intermixed with live oak, manzanita, and gray pine. The late afternoon sun dries these fuels, and the heating of the upper rim of the canyon relative to the shade in the bottoms creates upslope breezes. Many expensive homes have been built along the rims of the canyons to take advantage of the views out over the Sacramento Valley 2,000 feet below. The steep slopes below the ridgetops present access problems for ground-based firefighting equipment, in many cases, CDF can be put in the position of having to attack fires burning up from the canyons right at the ridgeline. Structures have priority over other resources in the urban-wildland interface, and this means that CDF often has its hands full protecting structures and evacuating residents, rather than having time to aggressively attack a blaze before it can establish itself as a crown fire that jeopardizes forestlands and other homes atop the ridge.

Response System

CDF and the BCFD have divided the county into over 100 Fire Response zones. These areas are usually defined by natural features such as ridgelines and creeks, and also reflect where the nearest firefighting resources are located. When a vegetation fire is reported, the dispatcher can use a countywide database to determine which response zone the fire falls within, and print out a sheet that lists the closest resources to be dispatched to the call.

Dispatch levels are a rating of the fire hazard for an area. For example, during the winter and spring months, grasses are usually green, and fuel moisture levels high, making brush and twigs more resistant to ignition. Dispatch levels during these months are usually low. During fire season, CDF uses information from telemetric climate stations several times a day to establish dispatch levels for each response area. These stations collect data at the Mendocino National Forest Genetic Research Center off of Skyway, on Cohasset Ridge, and in Butte Meadows. The dispatch level is based on factors such as fuel moisture, time of day, recent temperatures, and recent precipitation. The BCFD/CDF uses the dispatch level to decide how many resources to send to a fire reported in any specific area. For example, a vegetation fire reported in the area south of Forest Ranch under a Low dispatch level would result in the scrambling of 2 Fire Engines carrying 3-6 firefighters and a Battalion Chief. Under a High dispatch level, the same call would result in the dispatch of: 1 Air-Attack Group Operations Supervisor in a spotter plane, 2 airtankers, 1 helicopter, 1 battalion chief, 6 fire engines, 2 bulldozers, 2 fifteen-person hand crews, and 2 water tenders.

Firefighting Resources

Chico Urban Area Fire Resources

The City of Chico Fire Department has 42 full-time firefighters, 35 volunteers, 5 administrators (including 2 chiefs), 3 fire prevention officers, and a training director. These employees staff four stations, and work has begun on a fifth. Each station staffs an engine, and has a reserve engine on hand to cover the station when the primary engine is called out.

Station 1 is located between 8^th and 9^th streets on Salem.
Station 2 is located one block east of the Esplanade on E. 5^th Avenue.
Station 3 is on Boeing Avenue at the Chico Airport.
Station 4 is located on Notre Dame Avenue in the Skypark Shopping Center.
Station 5 is located at the intersection of Wildwood and Manzanita Avenues.

Station 1 has two engines, a wildland fire engine, a ladder truck, a hazmat truck, and a 4x4 patrol vehicle with a 300 gallon tank and pump used on brushfires.
Station 2 has two engines, a ladder truck, a rescue unit, and a utility pickup truck.
Station 3 has two engines and a aircraft crash-rescue unit.
Station 4 has two engines and a foam trailer unit.
Station 5 will have two engines.

As Chico continues to grow toward the northwest, probable sites for new Chico FD stations include one at Eaton Road and the Esplanade, and one on Highway 32 at East Avenue. A new station on the west side of the City is a priority for both the County and the City, and if the City builds one first, the county might not need to do so.

Butte County Fire Stations in the Chico City Area

The BCFD currently operates four stations in the greater Chico urban area. They are:

Station 41, located a mile north of the Esplanade on Highway 99.
Station 42, located 2 miles north of Highway 99 on Cohasset Road.
Station 43 (a volunteer station), ¼ mile north of East Avenue on Highway 32.
Station 44, at 2334 Fair Street in South Chico.

Station 41 staffs an engine, and staffs a bulldozer during fire season only, they use volunteers to staff a reserve engine, and a water tender.
Station 42 staffs an engine, and uses volunteers to staff a rescue unit, a water tender, and a utility pickup.
Station 43 uses volunteers to staff an engine, a communications unit, and a breathing support unit.
Station 44 staffs an urban engine, and a state Office of Emergency Services (OES) urban engine.

Volunteers

There are five volunteer fire companies within the upper Big Chico Creek watershed. They serve the Chico City, Cohasset, Forest Ranch, and Butte Meadows areas.

The Chico City FD has 40 volunteers.
Company 42 in North Chico has 55 members. They staff equipment at stations 42,43, and 44, and may staff an engine at station 44 during extreme fire conditions.
Company 22 is the Cohasset Volunteers. This company has 12-15 members who staff 2 4x4 engines, a 4x4 squad vehicle, and a 3700-gallon water tender.
Company 24 refers to the combined forces of Butte Meadows/Forest Ranch Volunteers. This company operates Stations 10 and 24.
The Forest Ranch Company has 14 to 15 volunteers who operate a 4WD engine, a 3,500-gallon water tender, and a 4WD-squad vehicle at station 24.
Station 10 is the volunteer station in Butte Meadows. Their 8-15 personnel (less in the winter) staff a 4WD engine and a squad (rescue) vehicle.

All of these volunteer companies are dispatched through the Emergency Command Center (ECC) in Oroville.

CDF Butte County Fire Department Stations

Within the State Responsibility Area (SRA) of the watershed, the closest CDF/BCFD resources will respond to an initial attack on a fire. In addition to the three stations within the Chico Urban area, CDF/BCFD career personnel staff stations in Forest Ranch, Cohasset, Paradise, Butte College, Durham, and an interagency CDF/US Forest Service Station in Butte Meadows. See the Fire History map for a list of all CDF/BCFD stations within the Big Chico Creek area.

Cohasset Station 22

Station 22 staffs one wildland fire engine. The station is closed when the first rains set in, usually by November 1^st.

Forest Ranch Station 23

Station 23 is a CDF station, and the BCFD pays the operating expenses in the winter so they can be staffed year-round as the primary emergency service provider for Forest Ranch, Butte Meadows, and Highway 32 East. They staff 2 engines during fire season, and one engine during winter (Davis, personal communication, 1998).

Butte Meadows Interagency Fire Station

The CDF and USFS engines (one of each) based at the Butte Meadows interagency fire station usually respond simultaneously to fires within their respective response areas, regardless of land ownership. The interagency station is staffed from May through October and closed for the winter. The Butte Meadows Forest Service engine is often called up to fires in Lassen and Modoc Counties, as this is where the bulk of the Lassen National Forest is located. The next closest USFS fire station is located in Chester, about 30 air miles to the north. Some of the areas in the headwaters receive their primary air support from the Chester Helitack and Air-Attack Stations. The Butte Meadows Station is the first responding station into areas in the reaches of the watershed between the headwaters and the 150 G Line into Campbell Creek.

Butte Fire Center

CDF/BCFD operates the Butte Fire Center (Station 17) for brushfire protection. This station staffs an engine only during extreme fire activity, but operates 5 crew transport vehicles, a Mobile Kitchen Unit, and 2 pickups. Butte County's three 15-person hand crews are stationed at the Center on Stieffer Road in Magalia and are run by the California Conservation Corps. The Fire Center also runs a training fire crew. When they are not busy fighting fires, they work on a variety of "reimbursible projects" for other state and federal agencies.

Butte County has no inmate fire crews, and the closest available crews are from Ishi Camp in Paynes Creek, Tehama County and Antelope Camp in Susanville, Lassen County. CDF captains run these 15-man crews. While the Tehama and Lassen inmate crews are available to work on pre-fire prevention projects such as fuels-thinning, they only work for 2 hours a day after travel time and lunch breaks. Because of this, the Butte Firesafe Council has asked the Butte County Board of Supervisors to consider establishing a work camp within the county. These crews would be available for fuel reduction and other project work, as well as for fire fighting (Harter, personal communication, 1998).

Aerial Resources and the Chico Airbase

The Chico Air-attack base is part of a larger network of aerial fire resources in Northern California. There are Air-attack bases in Fortuna, Redding, Chico, Chester, Ukiah, Santa Rosa, Grass Valley, Reno, and Klamath Falls, Oregon. While all of these resources are shared among agencies, many of the aircraft are privately owned and operated on a contract basis. As using large newer planes is cost prohibitive, almost all of the airtankers in service today are refitted military aircraft. The planes out of Chico are about 30 years old. Factors limiting the usefulness of airtankers include powerlines, broadcasting aerials, steep canyons, high winds, shadows, and daylight, as they don't fly at night.

The Chico Airbase has two airtankers assigned to it, Tanker 18 and Tanker 74. Tanker 18 is capable of carrying 2,000 gallons of retardant and has constant-flow tanks that can regulate the amount of retardant applied on each drop. It is owned by Aero-Union Corp. and is operated on contract to the Mendocino National Forest. Tanker 74 is owned by CDF. It carries 800 gallons of retardant and has four drop-doors. This means that it is capable of dropping 4-200 gallon loads before it must return to the base for reloading. The air-attack base is in the process of converting Tanker 74 to a constant flow system similar to the one that is on Tanker 18. It takes between 10 and 15 minutes on the ground to refill an air-tanker, and this does not include time for refueling the plane.

Contracts with other air-attack bases in the area provide crews with 15 minutes from the time that their call arrives until they have to be in the air. If air-attack resources are used to fight fires within the Chico FD's jurisdiction, their services are paid for by the state only if the City has committed all of its available resources prior to requesting the aircraft. The City must pay the cost of any services provided by the federally owned Mendocino National Forest plane (Brown, personal communication, 1998).

Tankers based in Chico cover an area extending roughly from Wilbur Springs near Highway 20 on the west side of the Valley, north to Dairyville on Highway 99, northeast to Belden, and down to around Bangor on the southeast. This is their initial attack zone. Like all other fire resources, they are moved around the state as needed. There is one tanker based in Chester, two in Grass Valley, and three planes in Redding. A large wildland fire may require the use of many airtankers, and all of the Air-attack bases in the state are capable of supporting (refilling and refueling) multiple aircraft from other bases (Iverson, personal communication, 1998).

Concerns have been raised regarding the encroachment of residential development around the Chico Airport. During a large fire campaign, up to 75 air-tanker flights per day may take off from the Chico Airport. While engine-noise is a definite concern for local residents, another major concern is related to public safety. If a twin-engined air-tanker carrying 2000 gallons of retardant at 10 lbs. per gallon loses an engine during takeoff, they are forced to either dump their 20,000 lbs. of payload immediately or crash. If development fills the areas under the flight corridor for the tankers, they will have no place to safely dump their retardant.

The Airport Landuse Commission is empowered by the State Public Utility Commission and makes recommendations to the City and County Planning Commissions regarding the needs of the airport community. How development may affect the viability of the air-attack base is one issue that they are attempting to address. (Baldridge, personal communication, 1998) CDF has plans to expand their airbase operations to accommodate National Guard C-130 based airtankers. Chico will serve as a regional hub for these aircraft to use when they are in the area, which is only during very large wildfires (Holmes, personal communication, 1998).

Helicopter

The Vina Helitack base is located about 12 miles northwest of Chico on Highway 99. The staff consists of a crew of 7 helitack firefighters plus pilots and helicopter maintenance personnel. Their Bell Super Huey Helicopter can carry 11 people plus a pilot, and when used with a monsoon bucket, it is capable of carrying 324 gallons of water at a time. They can respond to calls within 2-5 minutes, and be above Cohasset within 6-10 minutes of receiving a call (Costa, personal communication, 1998).

As the entire western slope of the Sierra Nevada and large areas of Southern California have vegetation types similar to those of the Big Chico Creek watershed, late-summer fire hazards are often similar throughout the state. As any large wildland fire suppression effort will require resources beyond what are available in the local area, the California Department of Forestry and Fire Protection (CDF), the U.S. Forest Service (USFS), Bureau of Land Management (BLM), and many local fire departments share resources. This means that during periods of high fire activity, resources such as aircraft, engines, bulldozers, and personnel may be sent to areas outside of their normal response areas. If resources leave the area, equipment from other local stations or from adjacent Ranger Units will move to cover the empty stations left behind.

Existing Fire Management Plans

California Department of Forestry and Fire Protection

CDF is required by Section 4114 of the California's Public Resources Code to periodically update the California Fire Plan. This is a planning document that sets forth a framework for the development of more specific wildland fire protection plans. The current California Fire Plan was approved in September of 1996 by the State Board of Forestry. The California Fire Plan has five strategic objectives. They are:

To create wildfire protection zones that reduce the risks to citizens and firefighters.
To assess all wildlands, not just the state responsibility areas. Analyses will include all wildland fire service providers - federal, state, local government, and private. The analysis will identify high risk, high value areas, and develop information on and determine who is responsible, who is responding, and who is paying for wildland fire emergencies.
To identify and analyze key policy issues and develop recommendations for changes in public policy. Analysis will include alternatives to reduce total costs and losses by increasing fire protection system effectiveness.
To have a strong fiscal policy focus and monitor the wildland fire protection system in fiscal terms. This will include all public and private expenditures and economic losses.
To translate the analyses into public policies.

(CDF, California Fire Plan, Executive Summary, 1996)

A key component of the Fire Plan framework is to identify for state, federal and local officials, and for the public those areas of concentrated assets and high risk. Most of the responsibility of quantifying assets at risk falls upon the local Ranger Units. (Harter, personal communication, 1998)

The Butte Ranger Unit is currently in the process of developing the Butte Fire Plan. This document is mandated by the State Fire Plan, and concentrates its efforts on fulfilling the requirements of objective number 2, listed above. Much of the work entailed in this process involves field-checking data, which has been provided by CDF's Fire and Resources Assessment Program (FRAP) offices in Sacramento. For example, FRAP compiles vegetation maps from a variety of sources to generate an estimate of what type of fuels are on the ground in any given area. Data sources for these vegetation maps include Landsat Satellite imagery, existing paper maps of vegetation types, and aerial photographs. Accurately mapping surface fuels requires on-the-ground field checking of the classifications derived from the in-office mappings that FRAP has produced. Very limited field checking has occurred for the data within the Butte County area.

The vegetation maps created by FRAP are used to designate "fuel models" - a general description of a site's characteristics such as the predominant type of fuel, (grass, brush, oak thickets, logging slash, small conifers, or large conifers) and the density of the fuel in tons per acre. Computer simulations of fire behavior use fuel model maps, slope maps, and historic weather information from the area to make rough predictions on how intensely a fire will burn or how fast it will spread if it ignites in a certain area. As fire-influencing environmental conditions such as wind-speed and direction, air temperature, and relative humidity all change throughout the day, many Fire Behavior Analysts are hesitant to model fire behavior over a time interval of more than 1-3 hours. Fire modeling is a relatively young science, and it requires very detailed, site-specific information to produce credible results. Current data being used by CDF locally is only accurate enough for a very regional scale of analysis.

Most of the CDF "risk to resources" analysis is being conducted at a scale in which data is averaged for 450-acre partitions of land. These areas are defined by dividing 7.5-minute USGS quad maps into a 9x9 cell grid. These segments are referred to as "quad 81sts". Stakeholder input is needed to determine values for each grid cell based on the property values, timber volumes, proximity to domestic water supplies, rangeland grazing values, recreation values, hydropower facilities, wildlife habitat values, and "other resource-related values." This information will be used in an analysis, which compares the resource values of the given area to the fuel level that has been computed for the same area, with the aim of identifying areas of "high-value/high-risk."

Stakeholder input is an important part of the planning process that is currently under way within Butte County. Jeff Harter is the County pre-fire engineering Fire Captain with CDF/BCFD in Oroville, and is responsible for the development of the Butte County Fire Plan. He is interested in getting any input on what County residents consider to be especially hazardous accumulations of fuels. Key components of the Butte County Fire plan are to identify areas with critical fire hazards or a strategic location on the landscape, to seek assistance and funding for private landowners to undertake Vegetation Modification Plans (VMPs) on their own land, and to implement fire education programs. An example of a strategic location might be a 10 acre parcel of land that happens to be in a location (maybe a ridgetop) where thinning its fuels could provide an important local fuelbreak.

Bidwell Park

The Wildfire Management Plan for Bidwell Park was commissioned by the City of Chico, Parks Department in 1991. Among its findings were that the Park presented a serious potential wildfire threat to life, the "magnificent valley oak woodlands" of Lower Park, and private property for the following reasons:

A growing accumulation of hazardous wildland vegetation, especially in Lower Park.
Mediterranean weather conditions with periodic winds that dry the vegetation and can fan wildfires.
An increasing risk of ignition due to increased use of the park.

The management plan proposed:

A fire education plan for park users. (To reduce the number of wildfires.)
Improving the wildfire reporting system.
Improving the ability of the Park staff to fight fires, and
Managing the Park's vegetation to perpetuate natural values while modifying the accumulations of fuels.

In Bidwell Park, CDF has proposed establishing fuel breaks in the area around Greengate (or 10 Mile House Road) to protect areas above the intersection of this road and Highway 32, such as Forest Ranch, from fires originating in the park. The park currently burns 40-80 acres of grasslands a year, with the aim of benefiting the native plants that have evolved to be fire adapted. The control of Star Thistle is one aim of the current burning program, but the plants must be burned for several consecutive years in an area to kill the seed, and the effectiveness of these projects remains unclear. Most of the burns conducted in the park are financed with training dollars from the various agencies that conduct the burns.

A mix of grasslands, star thistle and chaparral vegetation cover most of Upper Bidwell Park. By Zeke Lunder

Private Forestlands

Sierra Pacific Industries (SPI) is currently undertaking a "shaded fuelbreak" project in the Upper Big Chico Creek watershed. This project will thin the understory vegetation in a strip 200-400 feet wide running from the area just above the radio towers on Cohasset Ridge along the H-Line through Campbellville, and then along the Deer Creek/Big Chico Creek watershed divide to Highway 32 near the passing lanes two miles south of Transfer. The aim of this project is to create an area where large fires burning out of the Ishi Wilderness area along Deer Creek could be stopped before they burned into large tracts of land managed by SPI for timber production. Future SPI fuels projects might include extending this type of project down along the 150 G Line from the H-line down Campbell Creek to Highway 32 three miles north of the Forest Ranch CDF Station (Bean, personal communication, 1998).

In areas such as the campbell creek sub-watershed off of the 150 g line, spi plans to re-enter some of the older burns that have regenerated with tan oak. these operations will begin in the next five to fifteen years and entail removing the deciduous trees in ten- to sixteen-acre clearcuts, and then controlling the re-growth of brush in new plantations using the hand application of herbicides. Using these methods, SPI plans to do "as much fuel modification as time and money will allow" (Bean, 1998). Most of these projects will involve biomass-chipping projects and not broadcast burning. Other than these projects, SPI doesn't plan to alter their fire management strategies significantly in the near future. They will continue to advocate the aggressive suppression of all fires, and perform limited underburning following thinning, selective harvest, or oak removal operations.

A Sierra Pacific Industries fuelbreak project on the "H-Line" road along the divide between the Deer and Big Chico Creek watersheds. By Zeke Lunder

Butte County Wildland Firefighting Organization

CDF Organization

CDF is authorized to exist as a State department under the Public Resources Code. Its duty is to protect private and state-owned parcels of land that are declared a state responsibility by the State Board of Forestry. To be considered a State responsibility area, land has to have value as a forest, brush, grassland or watershed resource. These lands cannot be Federally owned or fall within the boundaries of an incorporated town or city. CDF is legally responsible for the protection of the watersheds of Butte County (John Hawkins, BCFD Division Chief, personal communication, September 1998).

Within the CDF organization, The State of California is divided into North and South Regions. The North Region Headquarters is located in Santa Rosa. Within these regions are multiple Ranger Units similar to the Butte Ranger Unit, which are usually delineated on a countywide level. The Butte Range Unit is divided into North and South Divisions, which are further divided into 7 battalion areas. The North Division is divided into 4 Battalions. Each of these has its own Battalion Chief who is responsible for coordinating between the 3 to 6 fire stations within the battalion area. Battalion Chiefs supervise the Fire Captains who run the individual Stations.

Butte County has contracted the services of CDF since 1931 to provide unincorporated areas with structural fire protection, technical rescue, and basic life support through the BCFD. Combined, CDF and the BCFD operate 42 Fire Stations, 1 Airbase, 1 Fire Center, approximately 200 career personnel (including seasonals), and approximately 400 volunteers at 21 volunteer fire companies. CDF/BCFD is responsible for all non-law enforcement emergency services in unincorporated areas of Butte County, and in some areas of Plumas and Tehama. These areas are referred to as the Butte Ranger Unit (BTU). Butte Ranger Unit resources are the first to respond to any fires on non-federal lands.

As each fire season presents planners with new dispatching challenges, CDF must coordinate between its many stations on a statewide level, assigning cover crews for stations that have gone to cover a station somewhere else. It is the primary responsibility of the Ranger Unit Headquarters at the Emergency Command Center (ECC) in Oroville to ensure that areas within a Ranger Unit aren't left without fire protection during intense periods of fire activity. In the event that engines and personnel are needed in another Ranger Unit, the local dispatch will usually assemble "strike teams" of five engines to leave as a group. To fill the empty stations, the Butte Ranger Unit can then request outside resources from adjacent units or through the CDF North Operations Dispatch in Redding. The Redding Dispatch acts as a coordinating agency for all Ranger Units within the Northern Region. If there are insufficient numbers of resources within the CDF organization, the BTU chief coordinates the Butte County Office of Emergency Services and can request local government resources. The State Office of Emergency Services coordinates the State's Master Mutual Aid System, which can dispatch City and County fire resources around the entire state.

As each Ranger Unit has multiple Batallion Chiefs, the fire dispatch tries to make sure that when engines and staff are sent out of the county, some of the veteran staff are left in each Division. Each CDF station develops detailed "cover guide" booklets with maps of their response areas for crews that will be covering their station if they are out of the area. In most cases, the volunteer fire companies within the Big Chico Creek watershed will not be called out of the county, though when needed, they and their engines may be put "on-call" at their station.

Summary

The Fire response system within the Big Chico Creek watershed relies on well-coordinated, timely efforts by many different specialists. A rapid response by all participants is vital in containing wildland fires before they can grow into uncontrollable conflagrations. Any successful firefighting effort must maximize the strengths that each different resource has to offer. Some firefighting efforts occur in areas that are accessible only to fire crews, while others can maximize their use of airtankers and helicopters. In the canyon areas, steep ground and low road-densities are the main factors that restrict access for fire equipment. While roads provide access for firefighters, they can also provide access for recreation users, therefore increasing the chances of accidental ignition. Aircraft are a vital component of the watershed's fire protection program. In many cases, these resources are able to slow the advance of wildfires until hand crews and heavy equipment can be moved into an area to contain the fire.

The task of accurately mapping fuels is very time consuming. A large scale planning effort such as the State Fire Plan project is only as accurate as the method of data collection. The method of fuels mapping being used by CDF relies heavily on satellite imagery that doesn't recognize features smaller than 100 feet square. Data gaps include a lack of detailed fuels/vegetation maps, which are especially important in the development of community fire protection plans.

Historical fire regimes and their ecological impacts are not well documented within the watershed. Additional information is needed to advance understanding of historical watershed functions related to hydrology, sediment transport, and wildlife habitats, and would be helpful in the development of fire management plans. As the Big Chico Creek, Butte Creek, Deer and Mill Creek watersheds all share similar ecological zones, any research collected on the fire ecology of the Big Chico Creek watershed will be useful to researchers working on the other local watersheds as well.

The lengthy negotiations to move toward a City of Chico/BCFD automatic-aid agreement has illustrated the difficulty of seeking to coordinate between the efforts of large, complex organizations. Developing a successful landscape-scale fire management strategy will require addressing a patchwork of federal, state, and private land management practices.

An aggressive fire suppression program doesn't necessarily correlate with reduced fire danger. The slopes below Forest Ranch have a low threat of ignition, but the cumulative effects of 100 years of fire suppression have created an area with an extremely high potential for a severe wildfire. In this context, what is the definition of effective fire suppression? As the amount of development in the wildland/urban interface increases statewide, and the costs of fire suppression escalate, pre-fire management projects such as fuel-reduction thinnings and other vegetation modification projects will be issues of increasing visibility. Fire issues within the Big Chico Creek watershed are similar to the concerns of watersheds throughout the Sierra Nevada, and any fire management plan must maintain a perspective on how growth statewide will affect public fire policy, and the availability of funds for private fuel reduction projects statewide.

References

Baldridge, Brian. (1998, November). North Valley Pilot's Association President. Personal Communication.

Bean, Jack. (1998, October). Sierra Pacific Industries, Regional Manager. Personal Communication.

Beardsley, Dennis. (1998, October). Park Director. Personal Communication.

Brown, Steve. (1998, October). Chico FD Chief. Personal Communication.

California Department of Forestry and Fire Protection. (1996). California Fire Plan. The Resources Agency. Sacramento, CA, Executive Summary.

Conlin, Andrew. (1998, Fall).USDA Natural Resources Conservation Service. Personal Communication.

Costa, Jim. (1998, September). Vina Helitack Pilot. Personal Communication.

Davis, Jim. (1998, September). CDF Fire Captain. Personal Communication.

Harter, Jeff. (1998, November). CDF Fire Captain. Personal Communication.

Hawkins, John. (1998, September). CDF Division Chief. Personal Communication.

Holmes, Bill. (1998, November). CDF Division Chief. Personal Communication.

Iverson, Steve. (1998, September). Chico Airbase Chief. Personal Communication.

Kielhorn, Eric. (1998, October). Cohasset CDF Fire Captain. Personal Communication.

Marcum, Buster. (1998, October). Forest Ranch Volunteers Assistant Chief. Personal Communication.

McAdams, Tom. (1998, September). Chief, Butte Creek Volunteers. Personal Communication.

USDA Forest Service, Pacific Southwest Region. (1997). Ecological Subregions of California. San Francisco. CA R5-EM-TP-005, pp.10-1 - 10-6

Maps

Fire History Map