Measuring fire danger: Santa Barbara County’s vigilant approach to wildfire preparedness
SANTA BARBARA COUNTY, Calif. – Santa Barbara County has a long history of destructive wildfires. Firefighters with the Santa Barbara County Fire Department do what they can to anticipate and prepare for fires before they spark.
Fire crews regularly measure live fuel moisture content, testing how quickly fuel – also referred to as vegetation – would burn during a fire.
Jason Sweet, Captain of Vegetation Management with County Fire, explained, "So across the County there are five different locations and those are varying elevations and locations that gives us a broad spectrum of the County."
This assessment is done at Cachuma Lake, Tepusquet Peak, Harris Grade, Refugio, and Hollister Ranch. As the County gets more wet weather, there is more new growth across the area.
Captain Sweet added, "During fire season or leading up to fire season, we do it twice a month to get a better gauge of where the fuel moistures are at."
The first part of the process is collecting at least five grams of old growth and new growth.
Eddie Luparello, an Engineer Inspector with the County's Vegetation Management, explained the difference between the kinds of growth. He said, "In early Spring, we're looking for new shoots that are like really vibrant green, they're almost like neon green, and then later in the year, for new growth, it cures and it gets a little darker red, and you can see some flowering on it that's died off almost, those are gonna be your new growth for the second half of the year. And then the old growth is pretty consistent, its almost like a dinosaur skin, like scaly looking, gray color, light gray. Those two we collect and then average them."
The crew takes samples in both shaded and sunny patches to get a representative sample of the plot. They test all kinds of brush and plants in the area, including chamise, which especially grows in Santa Barbara County. Then, the sample is taken to the County's Fire Prevention Center in Solvang. The machine bakes the chamise at 160 degrees Celsius for about ten minutes then gives out the moisture percentage.
Luparello explained, "So we are at 59.80 for Cachuma fuel plot. So that's below critical."
Both new growth and old growth are factored into this number. 60% is the cutoff for critical fire danger.
Luparello added, "The fuel is ready to burn and cured at that point, so any fire activity, we might see some pretty erratic behavior."
The number plays an important role in wildfire management. It can help fire departments decide where and when to increase staffing, and it even contributes to Red Flag Warnings or Fire Weather Watches that are issued.
County fire crews are in constant communication with the National Weather Service. Luparello said, "We do conference calls with the weather service and they'll go over some critical winds, or high temperatures we may be getting, and then they reference that with the area's live fuel moistures."
They're in contact with other local agencies as well, regularly distributing the data collected.
Luparello explained, "And we're gonna do the same calculations for each plot and then we're gonna average all those numbers together to give a county wide fuel moisture number."
It is imperative for residents to do their part too – create defensible space around homes, make sure smoke alarms work, have an escape plan, and be proactive.
