WORLD’S UGLIEST DOG CONTEST » KILLING IT ON ‘MINDHUNTER’ »

English bulldog Zsa Zsa captures Analy grad Britton grabs praise for
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TOYOTA/SAVE MART 350 » Reigning

NASCAR Cup Series champ could
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SUNDAY, JUNE 24, 2018 • SANTA ROSA, CALIFORNIA • PRESSDEMOCRAT.COM

No generator at SR senior facility

VILLA CAPRI » Attorney dozens of infirm residents to
evacuate in darkness without
says disabled had to use an elevator before it burned to
stairs under darkness in fire the ground, according to an at-
torney suing the company.
By RANDI ROSSMANN Oakmont Senior Living,
THE PRESS DEMOCRAT which operated Villa Capri,
revealed the absence of a gen-
A Fountaingrove senior care erator in pretrial discovery
home had no backup generator responses, said San Francisco
the night an October fire raced attorney Kathryn Stebner, who
into Santa Rosa and cut off elec- represents 17 residents and
tricity to the complex, leaving family members accusing the
company and its affiliates of
negligence and abandonment of
residents that night.
Oakmont officials also con-
ceded Villa Capri residents
didn’t participate in fire drills
conducted by the facility’s staff,
Stebner said.
“Without a generator or real
drills, how were residents with
wheelchairs and walkers sup-
posed to safely get off the sec-
ond floor in an emergency? This
situation both shocks me and
makes me sad to think of what
these residents went through,”
Stebner said.
Company officials and an at-
torney didn’t respond to multi-
ple requests for comment last
week.
The revelations emerged this
month as two Sonoma County
judges ruled against motions
by Windsor-based Oakmont Se-
nior Living, which was seeking
to add PG&E to the case and
postpone residents’ attorneys
from interviewing top company
officials, according to court doc-
uments.
The lawsuit alleges Villa
Capri staff abandoned at
least a third of the roughly 70
residents, including some who
were bedridden and living with
dementia, in the earliest hours
TURN TO GENERATOR » PAGE A13

“We’re really concerned about a lot of people cutting down

a lot of vegetation because it will make them feel safe.” A push
to build
Charred landscape
CAITLIN CORNWALL, biologist, about landscape decisions being made after the October wildfires

higher
in SR
tells fire’s complex toll Exemption from state
environmental rules
sought in fire rebuild
By KEVIN McCALLUM
THE PRESS DEMOCRAT

A plan to suspend bedrock

state environmental regulations
to help speed the construction
of new housing in fire-ravaged
Sonoma County received a sym-
pathetic hearing Wednesday in
Sacramento, but also skepticism
about whether relaxing envi-
ronmental reg-
ulations was
the best way to
help the region
recover.
Assembly-
man Jim Wood
and Santa Rosa
Mayor Chris
Coursey told Jim
a Senate com- Wood
mittee that AB
2267 was crucial to help Santa
Rosa stave off the “impending
economic crisis” the city faces
if it doesn’t build new housing
quickly.
“In the aftermath of this trag-
edy, the data suggests that un-
less the region can replace these
homes and expand the supply

TURN TO REBUILD » PAGE A2

KENT PORTER / THE PRESS DEMOCRAT

LANDSCAPE TRANSFORMED: Caitlin Cornwall, a biologist and research program manager with the Sonoma Ecology Center, takes in the view Thursday from a
ridgeline of Sugarloaf Ridge State Park at Hood Mountain, which was burned during the October fires, near Kenwood.
ANALYSIS

Despite blackened trees, flames have rejuvenated some plant growth Border crisis
By MARY CALLAHAN not backed
up by data
THE PRESS DEMOCRAT

T
he scorched ridges rising
above Sonoma Valley still look
from the air like the October By MANNY FERNANDEZ
wildfires were recent, the flames’ AND LINDA QIU
path over the Mayacamas Moun- NEW YORK TIMES
tains visible in dark shadows of bare
earth and burned trees. BROWNSVILLE, Texas — The
Past the mayor of this Texas border city
wing of a has been dealing with a crisis.
SUNDAY, JUNE
plane at
24, 2018 • SECTION
H

This past week, he declared a

Rebuild
NORTH BA
Y
2,500 feet,
beyond the
state of emergency. Drones filled
the skies and emergency vehicles
decimated raced down the streets. But none
neighbor- of it had anything to do with ille-
hoods of gal immigration.
Coffey Park It had to do with the weather.
and Foun- A severe thunderstorm
taingrove, A Western bluebird
perches on a
post in the Sleepy
charred wooden od of Santa Rosa.
Hollow neighborho
caused widespread flooding
Hood throughout the Rio Grande Val-
/ THE PRESS DEMOCRAT
JOHN BURGESS

SPECIAL SECTION Mountain ley in recent days. That other

A look back at the recovery stands like crisis — the one that President
CHRISTOPHER CHUNG / THE PRESS DEMOCRAT
effort after the wildfires / H1 a battle- Donald Trump says has been
scarred beginning Oct. 8, the human toll is that have passed since the fires. EXAMINING unfolding on the border be-
sentinel, one of several well-known indisputable. But the landscape tells a nuanced PLANTS: Claudia cause of the illegal entry of im-
peaks that serve as silent memori- Twenty-four lives were lost here story of stark contrasts — ecological Zbinden looks at migrants — is largely a fiction,
als to blazes that burned hottest on in the firestorm. Nearly 5,300 homes setbacks, losses and risks unleashed a matilija poppy the mayor, Tony Martinez, and
steep, rugged terrain. were destroyed. by the fires, as well as gains for na- on the property, other Brownsville residents and
Eight months after wind-whipped Whole neighborhoods were leveled ture and an ongoing rejuvenation in where she lived leaders said.
flames spread and converged across and dispersed, the diaspora still large- outside Santa “There is not a crisis in the
137 squares miles of Sonoma County ly unmeasured though three seasons TURN TO LANDSCAPE » PAGE A14 Rosa on Tuesday.
TURN TO BORDER » PAGE A12

Business E1 Crossword T7 Lotto A2 Obituaries B4 LEADING THE FARM BUREAU: Tawny Tesconi SANTA ROSA ©2018
Classified E5 Forum B11 Movies D6 Sonoma Life D1 takes the reins as county’s ag sector grapples High 78, Low 53 The Press
Democrat
Community B10 Golis B1 Nevius C1 Smith A3 with cannabis, other hot-button issues / E1 THE WEATHER, C8
A14 THE PRESS DEMOCRAT • SUNDAY, JUNE 24, 2018

LANDSCAPE
CONTINUED FROM A1
the wake of the disaster.
Much of that complicated pic-
ture takes shape from the small
window of a Cessna as it banks
over Warm Springs and a hilltop
stripped clean of buildings and
plant life alike. Vineyards and
valley streams unfold below.
In the upper elevations —
Hood Mountain and Sugarloaf
Ridge to the east and Trione-
Annadel State Park to the
west — and on ridge after ridge
across the Mayacamas, are gray,
blighted zones of black twigs
and charred forests, ground
burned too hot to support any
new plant life.
Swaths of this terrain burned
so hot that it altered soil chem-
istry and structure, making it
less absorbent during rains.
The average rainy season that
passed amounted to a forgiving
first test. Such areas remain
subject to destructive flooding
and debris flows, particularly in
the second and third year after
the fires, experts say.
Still, survival and regrowth is
evident through much of the fire
zone, in charred oak woodlands
and chaparral sprouting abun-
dant new life. Dazzling spring
wildflowers lured hikers to open
spaces for months. Burned coast
live oak trees sprouted new can-
opies and the torched branch-
es of chaparral — madrone,
manzanita, chamise and toyon
— sent forth bright wreaths of
green.
Most ecologists, though
almost hesitant to say it given
the human and material toll of
the fires, said the fires were in
many ways good for a landscape
adapted to fire over millennia.
The flames cleared old, dead
forest undergrowth and small,
unhealthy trees, allowing the
survivors to grow stronger and
boosting plant diversity.
Lynn Garric has witnessed the
transformation on the 40-acre
parcel she has called home for
34 years, nestled alongside upper
Mark West Creek off Alpine Road.
When the Tubbs fire raced
through her 40-acre property, it
destroyed her home and the cot-
tage where a close friend lived,
razed the bridge that linked her
to civilization, and blackened
every growing thing in sight.
And yet this spring, green
grass blanketed her homesite
beneath a forested hill. Daffodils
came up by the hundreds. Blos-
soms adorned the scorched fruit
trees that weren’t killed. Oaks
and bay trees around the place
have grown leafy new canopies.
“This was all black in Octo-
ber,” Garric, 69, marveled last
week as she gestured around her
land, now an oasis surrounded
by woods and forest still strug- KENT PORTER / THE PRESS DEMOCRAT
gling to survive. “All the leaves
DAMAGED BY FIRE: Caitlin Cornwall, a biologist and research program manager with the Sonoma Ecology Center, walks Thursday on a mountainside among the burned
fell off these trees.”
manzanita and oak trees. The October fires stirred the growth of light yellow whispering bells that lay dormant for decades at Sugarloaf Ridge State Park near Kenwood.
“The human element of these
fires was devastating,” said Mon- ma County and northern Marin people have disturbed the earth. erie Minton Quinto, executive
ica Delmartini, a stewardship County through the Sonoma Where the heat of fire pro- director of the Sonoma Resource
planner for the Sonoma County County Water Agency has been duced a kind of crust over the Conservation District. “We
Agricultural Preservation and underway since the fires. ground, preventing rainfall from could see erosion over the next
Open Space District and former “We’ve had no water quality infiltrating the soil, excessive couple of years. I’ve heard that
fire ecologist with the National issues in the water we’ve been runoff could raise stream levels pretty consistently.”
Park Service. “But from an eco- providing from the Russian during winter rains to new
logical standpoint, we’re seeing River,” principal engineer Don heights. Outlook for parks
a lot of positive effects.” Seymour said. But as it develops holes and Some of the most ravaged
Limited monitoring at four cracks over time, more rainfall terrain is in Sonoma County’s
Safeguarding burn zone creek sites before the rain start- will penetrate the ground, poten- regional and state parks, wilder-
In the immediate aftermath ed and after three subsequent tially leading to other hazards, ness oases that will take some
of the fires, the most urgent storms detected minimal con- like landslides or debris flows, time to recover. They include
environmental concern was centrations of some fire-related which occurs when a lava-like Shiloh Ridge, Sonoma Valley,
containment of toxic ash and de- pollutants downstream of Santa flow of soil, mud, rock and Hood Mountain regional parks,
bris from thousands of burned Rosa’s Coffey Park neighbor- water surges across the land and Sugarloaf Ridge and Tri-
homes throughout the burn hood, according to the regional with destructive and dangerous one-Annadel state parks. Most
zone, but particularly those near water quality control board. potential. of them saw the majority to all
creeks and drainages. Metal concentrations also Such incidents are more of their acreage burned over in
Chemicals, heavy metals, CHRISTOPHER CHUNG / THE PRESS DEMOCRAT were noted in the Mark West common in Southern California, October, though with varying
household toxins, electronics. DAMAGED TREE: An unusual growth Creek and Russian River water- where the geology and terrain intensity.
Each burned structure contained has covered live oak trees in the burn sheds — though within historic are different, experts say. Less is Volunteers have played a
an unknown mix of stuff that zone on Lynn Garric’s property on Alpine ranges, the water board said. known about the risk factors in key role working with limited
was incinerated in the flames Road near Santa Rosa. “We did see some increased Northern California. park staff to stabilize hillsides,
and left exposed to the elements hydrocarbon breakdown prod- But scientists are using the rebuild trails and bridges and
as the rainy season neared. engineer with the North Coast ucts, and we saw some increased North Bay fires to learn more. remove trees that could prove
The paths the fires took put at water board. metals,” Dougherty said. “Now Jonathan Perkins, a research hazardous.
risk key watersheds that provide Virginia Mahacek, natural we normally do see those geologist with the U.S. Geologi- But their recovery in most
both water sources and endan- resources and watershed recov- increased when we have storm cal Survey, is part of a team that cases will take decades, said Bert
gered species habitat. Most al- ery coordinator for the Sonoma events because there’s pollution also is monitoring soils in high- Whitaker, the county’s regional
ready are impaired by excessive County Office of Recovery and sources in our watershed that heat burn areas, in cooperation parks director, citing the loss
sediment and other factors. Resilience, said the timing of produce those.” with the county’s Water Agency of the pygmy Sargent’s cypress
About 8 percent of the land the fires for coho salmon and Seymour said there are on- and Open Space District, Pepper- forest atop Hood Mountain.
area in the Russian River wa- steelhead trout limited their going efforts to further analyze wood Preserve and State Parks. Still, park managers have re-
tershed was burned, exposing potential exposure to contami- water samples, in part to try He said the rapid vegetation opened all but small fragments
at least 617 streams to contam- nants from ash and debris and to understand how pollutants growth, especially in the past of trail to the public, offering a
ination, according to the North averted what might have been might be getting into the water two months, should help the soil landscape altered by the fires
Coast Regional Water Quality a large die-off. The blazes came in the first place and “what recover, but the threat of sheet- but largely recovering.
Control Board. before their typical migration was happening to those con- ing and excessive runoff could At Sugarloaf Ridge, “most of
Flames moved in some places and spawning season. taminants as they were moving persist for several more years. it seems to be coming back well,
right into the Sonoma Creek and “I don’t think it’s wrong to say through the system and poten- “You can get the bulk of the as it has evolved to do,” park
Mark West Creek corridors, as that we kind of dodged a bullet tially impacting our facilities.” recovery relatively quickly, but manager John Roney said. “But
well as their tributaries, incin- in that regard,” Mahacek said. “We’re looking at some very there’s still a lasting effect,” he we will see the effects for many
erating vegetation on the banks small changes and also analyz- said. years to come.”
and leaving blackened trees Water sources spared ing for things that a lot of people In the meantime, agencies
above. The way the rainy season aren’t looking at, in very small around the region already are Adapted to fire
Government, nonprofit, and unfolded helped, too. amounts,” Seymour said. working on updating plans for Sonoma County’s abundance
volunteer crews and landowners It came in gently and then But widely shared fears of storm patrol efforts this coming of open spaces and preserves
scrambled to deploy absorbent stalled for many weeks, provid- large-scale surface water con- winter. Like last year, they plan offer living laboratories to study
straw wattles and other ero- ing enough moisture to germi- tamination have been allayed. to have people on duty to mon- the fire effects, and the Glen
sion-control measures around nate grasses and other plants “Had our winter gone a little itor areas at risk of flooding, Oaks Ranch in Sonoma Valley is
burn sites, creek embankments, and extra time to install erosion differently, it could have been a flash floods or debris flows. one of those scientific hot spots.
storm drains and draws to controls. different story,” Lei said. The Water Agency has in- On a hillside overlooking the
prevent burned materials and “We almost couldn’t have got- With homesites now cleared stalled 22 permanent rain and onsite historic stone mansion,
contaminated runoff from enter- ten a better winter to follow the of fire debris, the threat of con- stream flow gauges around the a small stand of knobcone pine
ing waterways. fire,” said Patrick Lei, a botanist tamination is reduced, officials county in the wake of the fires remains the color and texture of
It was a largely successful ef- and watershed assessment tech- said. to serve as an early warning charcoal, the blackened trunks
fort, given the scale and general nician with the Sonoma County system, providing real-time data standing in stark relief against
chaos of the post-fire period. Water Agency. Slide risks remain on potential flooding to resi- the blue June sky.
“Lots of people pulled to- Mandatory testing of the But the risk of erosion re- dents and the National Weather But knobcone seedlings dot
gether,” said Mona Dougherty, drinking water supplied to more mains, particularly around roads, Service.
senior water resource control than 600,000 residents of Sono- culverts and other areas where “It’s not over yet,” said Val- TURN TO LANDSCAPE » PAGE A15
THE PRESS DEMOCRAT • SUNDAY, JUNE 24, 2018
LANDSCAPE
CONTINUED FROM A14
the surrounding area, sprouted
from pine cones opened in the
heat of last year’s fires.
It is just one of the plant ad-
aptations visible on public and
private lands in the fire zones,
where flames passed through
with varying intensity and du-
ration, sometimes hopscotching,
sometimes sweeping through in
an all-consuming front.
Burned regularly for thou-
sands of years by native com-
munities who used fire as a land
management tool, many plants
here have developed adaptations
that allow them so sprout new life
directly from the roots or even
the bark of badly burned trees.
They can only acquire the
fuel they need to live through
photosynthesis, so the plants
use whatever energy they have
stored to push out new foliage
as quickly as possible to capture
available sunlight.
Chaparral is among the first
communities to begin its recov-
ery, producing bright green fo-
liage that rings the base of each
bare and blackened tree.
Normally too dense to walk
through, the fires have left the
plants widely spaced, the sprout-
ed vegetation growing up amid
skeletons of the old trees it will
replace. It may be a few years be-
fore the burned materials topple
and decay, Delmartini said.
Burned coast redwood trees
are slower to recover, she said,
but no less resilient — layer
upon layer of needled skirts
growing out from their trunks in
a bid for sunlight.
Live oak and other oak
varieties that burned black and
dropped their leaves have sprout-
ed new foliage directly from
their charred trunks, as well.
But much of the new growth
on oak trees around the county
has picked up a powdery mildew
common in trees after fire, re-
sulting, in the most severe cases,
in light-colored, distorted leaves
and alien-looking growths that
come right from the tree’s new
twigs.
It should have no bearing on
the trees’ survival, said Greg Gi-
usti, advisor emeritus for the UC
Cooperative Extension’s forests
and wildlands ecology division.
Lei, who monitors watershed
health for the county Water
707 5th St Santa Rosa • 707-542-1855 • www.pedersensfurniture.com
A15
balance that needs to be struck.”
Delmartini said that peo-
ple need to adjust to wooded
places that may be “visually and
emotionally jarring to look out”
without taking immediate steps
to eradicate it.
“I think from a human stand-
point, areas like the Mark West
watershed and those conifer for-
ests that were really hit hard that
first night, they’re going to look
different for a while, so that can
be really challenging for people,”
she said.
“But it’s not necessarily chal-
lenging ecologically.”
Wildlife returning
Sonoma Land Trust Steward-
ship Director Bob Neale recalls
the bleakness of the terrain
when staff members were first
permitted to return to the
234-acre Glen Oaks Ranch off
Highway 12.
“The other thing after the fires:
There were no birds,” Neale
KENT PORTER / THE PRESS DEMOCRAT
said. “There were no animals.
SCORCHED LANDSCAPE: The loss of hundreds of trees on their 40-acre Franz Valley Road property proved to be another blow The silence was amazing.”
for Lois Weinstein, whose home of 30 years was destroyed during the October wildfires. But week by week, one species
after another came home, a sto-
Agency, worked a stint with the restoring balance in some of can’t regrow. ry that replayed itself through-
U.S. Forest Service in the after- those areas. The same is true of nonnative out the fire zone, as animals that
math of the 2013 Rim fire in the But for people like Lois Himalayan blackberries, which remarkably survived the flames
Stanislaus National Forest. At Weinstein and Dave Swarthout, will recover after being burned returned to their stomping
nearly 260,000 acres, it remains whose Franz Valley Road home unless they can be ripped out grounds.
the fourth-largest wildfire in of 30 years was destroyed in roots and all, Quinto said.. For the smallest animals,
California history. the fire, the loss of hundreds holes and burrows provided
“I worked in areas that you of trees on their 40 acres was Striking a balance escape routes throughout the
look out and you see 20 square another blow. Most will have to Advisers are urging restraint fire zones, while large tracts of
miles of dust,” Lei said. “It was be taken down. in getting rid of burned trees too unburned wildlands provided
moonscape.” “Sadly, I see signs of renew- soon, however. Some that appear refuge for mountain lions, black
In contrast, the Sonoma Coun- al in a lot of places, and I look to have survived the flames bears, bobcats, coyotes and deer.
ty fire pattens were patchier, around me, and I’m not really could still die. Others that Their return has been witnessed
leaving more moderate- and seeing it,” Weinstein said. appeared not to make it could and documented on wildlife
low-severity areas than those Sunlight through fire-thinned recover. cameras deployed around the
that burned with high intensity. forests has allowed for a profu- The same caution goes for region.
“Without sounding insensi- sion of wildflowers and plants safeguarding properties to At the 535-acre Bouverie
tive, it was a really healthy fires to bloom this spring, including reduce wildfire risk, said Caitlin Preserve across the creek from
in some ways,” Lei said. some known as “fire followers,” Cornwall, a biologist and re- Glen Oaks, where flames swept
last seen in the region more than search program manager with through about three-quarters of
Uneven recovery five decades ago, in the wake of the Sonoma Ecology Center. the landscape, ecologist Jeanne
The outlook for Douglas fir the 1964 Hanly fire. “There’s this window right Wirka, whose own home was
forests in the fire zone may be The fire has also brought forth now where these people are destroyed, felt sure she had seen
the grimmest. They lack the opportunistic, invasive weeds making really important deci- the last nesting pair of Canada
fire-adapted resilience of other such as thistles and broom that sions that could set their piece geese, which have used the pre-
trees, and thousands have been could overtake native species in of ground onto a good path or a serve bell tower for almost half
killed, many of them on steep some areas. Some of the seeds not good path for the next many a century to hatch offspring.
hillsides and ridges where they likely were spread by heavy years,” she said. “We’re really They returned in April, soon
remain standing, surrounded by equipment and even workers’ concerned about a lot of people to welcome six goslings into the
bare ground. boots as fire recovery efforts cutting down a lot of vegetation world.
Dominant in some areas in were underway. because it will make them feel “That was like my moment of,
part because of almost two “We’re seeing noxious weeds safe.” ‘Everything’s going to be OK,’”
centuries of fire suppression, the all over,” Lei said. “The guidance on defensi- she said.
shade-tolerant firs were able to Delmartini said land stew- ble space that comes straight
out-compete other species around ards may be able to bring some from Cal Fire is actually quite You can reach Staff Writer Mary
them and eventually grow taller, aggressive weeds under control sophisticated,” Cornwall said, Callahan at 707-521-5249 or
shading out oaks and other hard- because the fires germinated “and yet people often interpret mary.callahan@pressdemocrat.
woods, Delmartini said. their whole seed banks, so it as a very simplistic: ‘The more com. On Twitter @MaryCalla-
So the fires were actually plants rid from the ground now I cut, the safer I am.’ There’s a hanB.
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 SUNDAY, JUNE 24, 2018 • SECTION H

Rebuild NORTH BAY

A Western bluebird perches on a

charred wooden post in the Sleepy
Hollow neighborhood of Santa Rosa.
JOHN BURGESS / THE PRESS DEMOCRAT

FOCUS ON NATURAL RESOURCES

T
he green grass of spring, bird-
song and the burst of wildflowers.
They were the first signs of hope
to emerge this year from a North
Bay landscape transformed overnight by a
cauldron of fire in October.
The blazes churned across thousands
of acres of cherished public ground, burn-
ing all or parts of five regional and state
parks in Sonoma County. Ridgetop forests,
popular trails and even verdant stream-
beds were left unrecognizable. Many spots
remained closed for months.
But fire has long played a natural role
here. And the scars it left on our landscape
more than eight months ago are slowly
healing. New seedlings have sprouted,
wildlife has returned and stewards have
fanned out to tend the recovery.
“People are critical to the health of the
land,” one ecologist says. The same holds
true for our own health. It depends on the
places we inhabit, the resources we share
and their comeback in the wake of the fires.

INSIDE

FOUNTAINGROVE RISING ESTABLISHING SERVICES RENEWAL BEGINS AT EXPLORING OPEN SPACES

ABOVE AREA’S OBSTACLES
Signs emerging across hillside
community that construction
is poised to gain momentum.
Page H6
IN LARKFIELD AREA
With sewer proposal advancing
and utility crews at work, pace
set to pick up for homebuilding.
Page H8
PEPPERWOOD PRESERVE
Caretakers find “fire is an agent
of rebirth and recovery” for
landscape at 3,200-acre property.
Page H11
COMING BACK TO LIFE
Opportunities to witness nature’s
rejuvenation after wildfires are
happening in parks all around us.
Page H12

PARTICIPATING SPONSORS
H4 THE PRESS DEMOCRAT • SUNDAY, JUNE 24, 2018

COFFEY PARK IN SANTA ROSA »

Neighborhood filled with sounds of construction on nearly
every block as rebuilding continues; park redesign process underway

Workers’ knocks
signal progress

PHOTOS BY CHRISTOPHER CHUNG / THE PRESS DEMOCRAT

Tall weeds grow around the playground at the park along Mocha Lane in Santa Rosa’s Coffey Park neighborhood. City officials estimate the cost of a new Coffey Park could reach roughly
$5 million, which doesn’t include the costs of hazardous material testing, demolition and redesign.

T
By ROBERT DIGITALE
THE PRESS DEMOCRAT

he construction zone has

come to Coffey Park.
June ends with the
hum of machinery and
the popping of nail guns at scores
of homesites across the north-
west Santa Rosa neighborhood.
The scent of sawed lumber drifts
in the air.
As of Monday, the rebuild
included 222 homes under con-
struction in Coffey Park. Rare
is the block that doesn’t have at
least one lot prepared with wood
forms set in place for a new foun-
dation. Many more have framed
walls taking shape, a number
have completed exteriors and
roofs.
More building is in the pipe-
line. By Monday property owners
had applied to rebuild more than
a third of the nearly 1,260 homes
that burned in the neighborhood.
The breakdown of those 456 total
applications include 138 homes
still in city review and 96 where a
building permit has been issued
and construction is expected to
soon begin.
Coffey Park property own-
ers in late June accounted for
46 percent of the 982 permits
submitted in all the fire zones
of Sonoma County, according to
numbers from city and county
records. That figure is notewor-
thy because the neighborhood
lost slightly less than a quarter of
the 5,280 homes destroyed in the
county.
It also has the first two rebuilt homes
completed from all the areas burned during
last fall’s wildfires, the worst in California
history.
PG&E lineman Marc Hockngerger finishes installing a meter on a home in Coffey Park.
Here is a recap of other Coffey Park news.
Neighborhood park progress
City officials expect to learn later this
summer the extent of toxic contamination
in the city parkland from which Coffey Park
gets its name.
What they already know is rebuilding the
5.85-acre neighborhood park likely won’t
come cheap.
The cost of a new Coffey Park could reach
roughly $5 million, said Jen Santos, deputy
director of parks. That doesn’t include the
costs of hazardous material testing, demoli-
tion and redesign.
Federal disaster funds likely will pay for
a portion of the rebuild. To obtain such aid,
city staff members are talking with officials
from the Federal Emergency Management
Agency, or FEMA.
“We’re going to put back something very
similar to what was there,” Santos said.
How similar will depend on what neigh-
bors tell city staff members this sum-
mer and perhaps this fall during public
meetings about the park’s future design.
Possible items to be added include a dog
park, a restroom and a commemorative art
project.
The neighborhood park is one of about 10
city parks and open-space areas hit by the
October wildfires. The city calculates the
fire damaged more than 73 acres, including
13 acres of landscaped areas that mostly sit
along roadways.
During the Tubbs fire, the parkland of
Coffey Park became covered with a danger-
ous mix of debris. The city closed the park
after workers found such items as wood
shards and bits of glass and fiberglass.
The park since has taken on a wild,
unkempt look. The grass has turned brown
and grown a few feet high in places. The
city can’t mow what once was lawn because
of the large amount of debris there, Santos
said.
The city Fire Department is expected to
hire a company soon to use grass trimmers,
or weed whackers, to cut down at least a por-
tion of the dried grasses for fire prevention
purposes, she said.
Along with testing for hazardous materi-
als, the city this spring examined the parks’
trees, many of which are three decades old.
“We want to keep as many existing trees
as we can, if they will survive,” Santos said.
The fate of certain trees may depend on
the result of the toxic testing. Some rela-
tively healthy trees still might need to be
removed in order to adequately clean the
soil around them, Santos said.
TURN TO COFFEY PARK » PAGE H5

“We want to keep as many existing trees as we can, if they will survive.”
JEN SANTOS, deputy director of Recreation and Parks for Santa Rosa about the refurbishment of the neighborhood’s park
THE PRESS DEMOCRAT • SUNDAY, JUNE 24, 2018 H5

CHRISTOPHER CHUNG / THE PRESS DEMOCRAT

A PG&E crew hooks up electricity to a house in Santa Rosa’s Coffey Park neighborhood. The utility plans to bury some of its lines in the area.

COFFEY PARK underground utilities.

CONTINUED FROM H4
After reviewing the testing results,
officials intend to go out to bid to find a com-
pany to clean and demolish the park. That
project is slated to start this fall.
Meanwhile, in August the city plans to
hold its first community meeting on design-
ing the new park. The City Council must
approve the final project.
Barring unforeseen problems, the park’s
rebuilding is expected to begin next year.
Community groups and individuals have
contacted the city about contributing in
some way to the rebuild, Santos said. The
city has named the nonprofit Santa Rosa
Parks Foundation as the coordinator for
accepting such donations.
PG&E’s underground work
Pacific Gas & Electric Co. by late June
had completed about 42 percent of the
trenching in Coffey Park that will hold new
PG&E has dug nearly 31,000 feet of
trenches. Workers have completed install-
ing gas lines for one of the neighborhood’s
five zones. They pressurized the gas system
in that zone on June 11.
PG&E plans to dig nearly 23 miles of
trenches for underground utilities in the
burned neighborhoods around Santa Rosa,
including Mark West and Hidden Valley.
The work in Coffey Park is slated to be
wrapped up by the end of the year.
Neighborhood group revamps
Coffey Park got organized a few weeks
after the October wildfires as neighbors
came together to consider how to best help
one another recover from the disaster.
By mid-November, approximately 500
neighbors had gathered at Luther Burbank
Center for the Arts. Some stepped forward
to volunteer as block captains for five areas
within the neighborhood. Thus, the group
Coffey Strong obtained its first group of
leaders.
The leadership team began meeting
weekly in order to build a network and
help property owners understand key
details of debris cleanup, insurance and
rebuilding. Coffey Strong held workshops
and sent out blasts of information on social
media.
But in June the group began to adapt to
changing needs, said Coffey Strong Chair-
man Jeff Okrepkie. It switched to monthly
board meetings and reorganized its leaders
according to tasks that need to be undertak-
en, not as block captains.
Some of the remaining tasks include
rebuilding the concrete walls along Hopper
Avenue near Coffey Lane, redesigning the
neighborhood park and helping neighbors
navigate the process of rebuilding homes.
Okrepkie said the group’s changing struc-
ture is a sign of progress in the recovery.
Moreover, Coffey Strong is here to stay for
its neighbors.
“Whatever they need, that’s what we
become,” he said.
You can reach Staff Writer Robert Digitale
at 707-521-5285 or robert.digitale@pressdem-
ocrat.com. On Twitter @rdigit.

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H6
FOUNTAINGROVE IN SANTA ROSA »
As builders and water systems workers descend on hillside neighborhood,
restoration effort for homes and open spaces shows signs of momentum
Slowly rising
A single-family home is under construction Thursday along Leete Avenue, near Parker Hill Road, in the Hidden Valley neighborhood of Santa Rosa.
above obstacles
N
By KEVIN McCALLUM
THE PRESS DEMOCRAT
early half of the 3,100
Santa Rosa homes
reduced to ash in the
Tubbs fire were in the
Fountaingrove neighborhood.
But nine months after the
most devastating wildfire in
state history, just 16 percent of
the homes being rebuilt in the
city are in the hillside enclave.
The rebuilding effort in the area,
while picking up, still lags behind
other areas of the city.
Of the 266 homes under con-
struction in the city last week,
just 44 were in the Fountaingrove
and Hidden Valley areas, com-
paring to 222 in Coffey Park.
The explanations for the slower pace of
recovery in those areas are by now familiar:
The cleanup of the larger lots generally
took longer. The gap between insurance
payouts and the cost of reconstruction is in
many cases greater for an area where most
of the homes — many of them custom — ex-
ceeded $1 million in value. The average age
of residents in the area was greater, leaving
many less motivated to endure two years
or more of rebuilding. And the uncertainty
created by the water supply contamination
in a section of the neighborhood covering
350 homes has given many pause.
Facing so many obstacles, hundreds of
residents have put their properties up for
sale after clearing their lots. The area consis-
tently has had the highest concentration of
burned lots on the market since the disaster.
But there are signs rebuilding in the area
is picking up quickly. The 44 homes under
construction is sharply up from the 26 last
month. And the number of applications
in the pipeline is growing fast. The 106
applications represents 43 percent of the 244
pending permit applications in the city.
It all suggests it’s going to be a busy con-
struction season on the hillside.
Water system impovements
In addition to the influx of homebuilders,
Fountaingrove is about to be invaded by
an army of water system workers in the
coming weeks in Santa Rosa’s latest effort
to eliminate the contamination in the area’s
drinking water.
The city has enlisted two different
construction firms to help replace water
service lines in the hillside neighborhood
on an accelerated timeline.
Kansas-based Terracon will be replacing
service lines to 352 homes inside the water
quality advisory area, where benzene is
believed to have been released from melting
plastic water pipes, contaminating the
water mains.
That work will cost $2.3 million and is
expected to be completed
by Aug. 8.
“Probably
Sonoma-based Northern
Pacific Corp. will handle a
smaller contract, replac-
ing about 90 service lines
at properties outside the
our biggest
advisory area where the
contamination is thought challenge is
to be isolated and not
systemic. running into
That work will cost
about $600,000 and is sup-
posed to be completed by
things that
the end of August.
In both cases, workers we don’t
will be digging trenches
in the street, exposing the
water mains and replacing
know about.”
LORI URBANEK, deputy director
the water service lines that of capital projects engineering
run from the trunk to the for Santa Rosa, about the risks in-
curb and the meters. volved with infrastructure repairs
The lines, most of which
are uncoated ¾-inch
copper, will be replaced with larger 1-inch
poly-coated copper. The uncoated pipes
were susceptible to corrosion and leaks.
The larger size lines are now required
because of the increased demand created
by the requirement that new homes be built
with fire sprinklers.
City officials have previously said they’ve
been surprised at how some of the under-
ground utilities have been arranged, includ-
ing the placement of gas lines. Because of
this, contractors will be required to careful-
ly identify utilities before digging, said Lori
Urbanek, deputy director of capital projects
engineering.
The city and contractors will be working
closely with PG&E, ensuring the process
goes smoothly, though there are inherent
risks, Urbanek said.
“Probably our biggest challenge is run-
ning into things that we don’t know about,”
Urbanek said.
Restoring open spaces
Homes and water lines aren’t the only
things being rebuilt in Fountaingrove. The
hundreds of acres of natural habitat and
THE PRESS DEMOCRAT • SUNDAY, JUNE 24, 2018
CHRISTOPHER CHUNG / THE PRESS DEMOCRAT
open space that made the area so attractive
also is in dire need of restoration.
The Fountaingrove II neighborhood,
which was mostly completed in the 1990s, is
responsible for managing about 214 acres of
wildlands in the area.
About 80 percent of those areas were
damaged by the fire, said Dennis Searles,
president of the nearly 600-parcel home-
owners’ association, about 500 of which
were lost in the fire.
The association has been rethinking how
it replants in the wake of
the fires, keenly aware
that, despite years of thin-
ning efforts, the forested
areas provided fuel for the
firestorm as it ravaged the
hillside neighborhood.
Douglas fir, in particu-
lar, are a species that got
over-concentrated in cer-
tain areas. The association
wants to discourage these
trees in favor of hardwoods
like oak.
“Firs go up like a Ro-
man candle,” said Bruce
McConnell, who lost his
home in the fire and serves
as vice president of the
association. “On the night
of the fire, I watched them
literally explode.”
Too many trees, includ-
ing Douglas fir and bay,
have been allowed to grow closely together
in a way that makes them thin, dense and
more like brush than trees, Searles said.
“It’s really a question of getting back to
vegetation management,” Searles said.
The association has been removing
burned trees and restoring irrigation and
native vegetation to the 20 acres of open
space it’s responsible for along roadways in
the area. It recently planted about 330 trees
in these areas and the wildlands.
It’s also removing burned trees that
might pose a danger to existing homes or
lots in the process of rebuilding.
The restoration effort depends on the de-
gree of damage. In areas where the fire was
most intense, the land is so badly scorched
that nothing may grow back for years.
Those areas may just be allowed to become
grassland, Searles said.
In others, however, nature is rebounding
on its own.
“In many places, the regrowth is just
phenomenal,” he said.
You can reach Staff Writer Kevin McCallum
at 707-521-5207 or kevin.mccallum@pressde-
mocrat.com. On Twitter @srcitybeat.
THE PRESS DEMOCRAT • SUNDAY, JUNE 24, 2018
LARKFIELD-WIKIUP AND MARK WEST SPRINGS »
As areas devastated by the October firestorm continue the ardous
rebuilding process, every milestone signals a small, but significant, victory
Communities step
toward recovery
Foreman Shawn Wright signals for sand to be added to a trench on Oxford Court in Larkfield. PG&E crews have been busy replacing the underground electric systems in Mark West Estates
and Larkfield Estates neighborhoods that were leveled by the Tubbs fire in October. The utility plans to put more than 19,000 feet of power lines underground in the subdivisions.
L
By J.D. MORRIS
THE PRESS DEMOCRAT
arkfield property owner
Phyllis Rogers has been
among the strongest sup-
porters of expanding sew-
er service into her burned neigh-
borhood as it’s rebuilt from the
devastation wrought by the Tubbs
fire. But she may not get to enjoy
the new infrastructure herself.
The expanded sewer system,
which the Sonoma County Board
of Supervisors agreed to move
forward with earlier this month,
likely won’t be finished until
2020. And Rogers is intent on
constructing a new home at her
Dover Court property on top of
where her septic system sits now
— which isn’t allowed.
“I will still rebuild,” said Rog-
ers, 80. “But I’m not gonna re-
build until I can flush my toilets.”
In theory, Rogers doesn’t have to wait: She
could connect back to her old septic system
and switch over to sewer when the project
is finished. But that would force her to con-
strain her home design to the old “railroad
car” it was before, and she won’t do that.
Instead, Rogers plans to move from her
son’s place in Rohnert Park into a new home
she’s buying in Oakmont. And she may not
return to Dover Court.
“If I don’t live in it, I’m sure I’ll find some-
body that would pay me some money to be
there,” Rogers said of her Larkfield rebuild.
“If I don’t need to move from Oakmont, I’ll
stay. ... It may be a good fit for me. I can’t tell.”
Regardless of the uncertainty, Rogers said
she’s “elated” the Larkfield sewer proposal
is advancing. And at least in that regard,
she is far from alone: When supervisors,
who are also directors of the county Water
Agency, agreed unanimously in early June
to move the sewer project along, their vote
was met with applause and even tears from
a group of Larkfield fire survivors who came
to show their support for the program.
Community reaches milestone
The unincorporated community between
Santa Rosa and Windsor also marked a few
other major milestones recently. Perhaps
most significantly, Fairfield-based Silver-
mark Construction Services finished the
first completely rebuilt home in the area.
The home on Willow Green Place is
among about 30 lots around Larkfield and
Phyllis Rogers, who owns property in Larkfield, signs in at a rebuilding meeting at Mark West Elementary
in Larkfield. Rogers is a supporter of expanding the sewer system to her neighborhood.
Fountaingrove that Silvermark has bought
— or is in the process of purchasing — from
homeowners who don’t plan to rebuild.
Silvermark is selling those homes, but the
company is also rebuilding on some lots for
homeowners who aren’t selling.
The Willow Green Place lot has come a
long way since the company first got in-
volved, said owner Greg Owen.
“When we went to the site, the fire had
devastated it (so much), you couldn’t even
tell where the lot was,” he said.
No one has bought the property yet, as
the company is planning to use it as a model
home, according to Owen. He said homes
in that neighborhood were selling in the
$800,000 range, which is where Silvermark is
pricing its rebuilds.
Overall, the county has issued about
175 permits for single-family homes and
granny units on fire-impacted properties in
the greater Larkfield-Wikiup and Mark West
Springs area, according to county planning
data, which also includes Knights Valley.
About 740 homes were lost in Larkfield and
along the Mark West Springs corridor.
Plans afoot for new county park
Some of the burned land in the hills off
Mark West Springs Road is moving closer to
becoming a new county park. In late May,
county supervisors agreed to spend up to
$5.35 million in public money to buy a 276-
acre property from the family of John and
Martha McCullough, who had lived there
since the 1970s and lost their home on the
property in the fires.
An adjacent 822 acres were already pur-
chased by the county, which is hoping to buy
H7
JOHN BURGESS / THE PRESS DEMOCRAT
KENT PORTER / THE PRESS DEMOCRAT
two more nearby sites to form the nearly
1,200-acre Mark West Creek Regional Park
and Open Space Preserve.
Given that much of the land burned in Oc-
tober, Supervisor Susan Gorin has described
the future park as a “laboratory on fire
recovery.” Bill Keene, general manager of the
county’s Agricultural Preservation and Open
Space District, has said the planned park will
become the “crown jewel” of the county park
system, in part because of the stunning views
it will afford at higher elevations.
The purchases are currently being han-
dled by the open space district, which will
transfer the land later to the Regional Parks
department. The sale of the McCullough
family’s property is expected to close
June 28, according to a spokeswoman for the
open space district.
PG&E burying power lines
Meanwhile, PG&E has been busy replac-
ing the underground electric systems the
Tubbs fire destroyed in Mark West Estates
and Larkfield Estates.
Crews are trenching in both burned
subdivisions, which lie on the north and
south sides of Mark West Springs Road just
east of Old Redwood Highway. PG&E plans
to trench more than 19,000 feet in the two
subdivisions, and a company spokeswoman
said the work is now 27 percent complete.
Construction is expected to be done by the
end of the year, and temporary power lines
are serving the neighborhoods in the mean-
time. Gas lines were undamaged by the fires.
You can reach Staff Writer J.D. Morris at 707-
521-5337 or jd.morris@pressdemocrat.com.
H8
SONOMA VALLEY »
In Mayacamas country, residents band together to figure out what to do
about charred trees and ponder whether to rebuild nearly 50 lost homes
“Yeah, we lost some trees, but most of the trees are alive,” said Bob Neale, stewardship director of the Sonoma Land Trust. Neale sits with Allison Ash, board president for Mayacamas
A byproduct of
Volunteer Fire Department, surrounded by trees blackened by October’s Nuns fire near the top of Cavedale Road in the Mayacamas Mountains.
disaster: fortitude
H
By CHRISTIAN KALLEN
SONOMA INDEX-TRIBUNE
igh in the Mayacamas,
the charred, spindly
skeletons of knobcone
pine reach in futility
from the ash to the sky. The road
is steep, narrow and winding, ris-
ing 2,000 feet from the valley floor
to the ridgeline that separates
Sonoma from Napa County.
It might be called inhospitable
country, but 150 houses have been
built up here since the homestead-
ers of the late 19th century first ar-
rived. Nearly a third of the build-
ings were consumed during the
October wildfires, which leveled
46 homes in the area and burned
many other guesthouses, garages,
wells and pumps.
At one, Lee Chadwick Rogers
lost his life, fighting to defend his
Cavedale Road home from the
Nuns fire.
Allison Ash points out her house — “the
one with the arches,” she said, indicating a
long ranch-style home on the far side of the
canyon. It’s surrounded by the barren land-
scape of the burn, and it seems a miracle the
house survived.
“We call that Alopecia Ridge,” she said,
comparing the appearance of the denuded
hillside to the effects of a disease that causes
baldness.
There’s very little self-pity up here at the
Mayacamas Volunteer Fire District annu-
al meeting and community potluck, held
earlier this month at the Ledson Mountain
Terraces property off Cavedale Road. Ash,
board president of the district, has lived in
the area full time since 2009, but many at the
potluck have been residents even longer.
“Our lives are divided forever, before
the fire, and after the fire,” she said to the
assembled neighbors. “It’s clear we are
stronger and more resilient than we ever
thought we could be.”
Community strength is one of the by-
products of disaster that Sonoma residents
have discovered in their neighborhoods, in
themselves.
“We know our neighbors up here better
than we would if we lived in town, because
we rely on them,” said Randy Stokes, a
12-year resident. “A lot of us are up here
because we need a lot of room.”
Stokes lived in one of the 47 homes taken
by flames in October, a home he built him-
A banner showing signs of gratitude from
the community to the Mayacamas Volunteer
Fire Department was on display June 9 at the
MVFD’s annual community picnic.
self. Now, he’s staying with his wife, Linda,
in a backyard cottage in Sonoma and mak-
ing plans to rebuild. “We used to take walks
in the woods in the evenings. Now, we’re
10 minutes away from a beer at Hopmonk.”
He seems conflicted by the convenience.
Neighborhood captains
Though not a volunteer fireman, Stokes
serves as the district’s “neighborhood
captain.” He meets with Supervisor Su-
san Gorin’s field representative, Allison
Kubu-Jones, every couple weeks at the
Kenwood Depot, and often Gorin herself,
along with a dozen or so other neighborhood
captains in the First District from Riebli
Road to Glen Ellen.
Gorin followed Supervisor James Gore’s
lead on the neighborhood captains concept,
finding it a manageable way to stay in touch
with the hundreds of people whose lives
were turned upside-down and inside-out by
the fires.
“Neighborhood captain meetings are
intended as a place for captains to come
together and talk directly with us and
Permit Sonoma about challenges they and
their neighbors are encountering,” said
Kubu-Jones. “These meetings also offer
an opportunity to network and collaborate
with other fire survivors and learn from one
another. “
Guest speakers are often brought in to
talk about subjects of common concern. On
June 7, the subject was trees.
“I don’t know trees, I’m an engineer,”
said Johannes Hoevertsz, director of the
county’s Department of Transportation and
THE PRESS DEMOCRAT • SUNDAY, JUNE 24, 2018
ROBBI PENGELLY / SONOMA INDEX-TRIBUNE
Public Works. But he admits “tree removal
is a hot-button issue,” and he finds himself
surrounded by inquisitors about county’s
policy on taking down fire-damaged trees.
“What happened to my view? I want my
view back,” said one of the neighborhood cap-
tains, Lizbeth Wiggins. She shows pictures,
before and after, of a stand of trees some 50
yards away from her house. The difference is
striking and all too common in this group.
But the county is preparing to remove
fire-damaged trees that pose a danger to
roads, both private and public. That means
first counting, evaluating and soon taking
down the trees that might fall or drop a
limb on a right-of-way, endangering lives or
property.
Hoevertsz’s department has counted
10,733 trees damaged by the fires along
90 miles of road. About 1,000 of them
sustained high or extreme damage, and the
trees must be removed in the next year. The
rest are rated as moderately damaged and
will be monitored over the next five years. If
they don’t show signs of significant recov-
ery, they too will be taken down.
These numbers are separate, he said, from
the trees that PG&E is trimming or remov-
ing to protect power lines.
The county will notify homeowners when
the tree crews will be coming onto their
property, and what trees are being moni-
tored, Hoevertsz said. FEMA will take down
the high-damage trees along public roads,
but the county will do the work on private
property. The right-of-way is determined
as a 40-foot corridor along the road, 20 feet
from the centerline, but if a large tree is
farther away and would threaten the right-
of-way, it too shall be felled.
These numbers do not include trees still
farther away from roads, of which there are
probably tens of thousands in the woodlands
of Sonoma and Napa counties. If they haven’t
already disappeared in a heap of cinders and
ash, they may be lightly or heavily burned. In
that case, it’s usually up to the property own-
er to decide how they deal with the damage.
More than burned trees
The Sonoma Ecology Center released a
survey late last year that claimed
28.5 percent of the Sonoma Valley had
burned, including significant percentages
of Sugarloaf Ridge, Hood Mountain and
Sonoma Valley Regional Park. And while
that’s inevitably a lot of trees, it’s also a lot
of brush and grasses. That, too, concerns
Mark Newhouser, the restoration ecologist
at the Sonoma Ecology Center.
Ninety percent of birds are low-level
nesters — like towhees, finches and juncos,
Newhouser tells the group.
“And their habitat is being removed by fear
of fire,” he said, speaking of the landowners
TURN TO SONOMA VALLEY » PAGE H9
THE PRESS DEMOCRAT • SUNDAY, JUNE 24, 2018 H9

SONOMA VALLEY
CONTINUED FROM H8
who find charred landscapes and plants just
too depressing to look at, who want to clear it
all and replant as quickly as possible.
Of the 30,327 acres of the Sonoma Val-
ley that burned, only a portion was from
high-intensity fire, hot enough to incinerate
everything in its path. That meant houses as
well as vegetation, markedly acres of knob-
cone pine and Douglas fir up on the ridges
of the Mayacamas, and into canyons along
Mark West Springs Road, Riebli Road and
over into Fountaingrove.
Stokes recalled trying to retrieve his
cast-iron cookware from the ruins of his
kitchen. “It had either melted, or vaporized.
Vaporized,” he repeated. “That happens at
temperatures of 2,300 degrees Fahrenheit.”
While the trees are gone, they are likely to
come back eventually. Fire opens the seroti-
nous cones of the Douglas fir and knobcone
pines, releasing their seeds. Already, seed-
lings are found in the cemetery landscape.
“Yeah, we lost some trees, but most of the
trees are alive,” said Bob Neale, stewardship
director of the Sonoma Land Trust. “Valley
Oaks, live oaks, blue oaks — even some of the
bigger firs. We expect a lot of those to live.”
Devastation from firestorm
The mixed-oak woodlands he describes was,
like the chaparral of the Mayacamas, most
heavily burned on the first night of the Oct. 8
fires as gale-force winds swept west across the
county, bringing with them a firestorm that
incinerated more than it spared.
“All bets are off in a firestorm,” said Ne-
whouser, “whether it’s trees, plants or our
homes.”
But while he acknowledges that “it’s
horrible looking at a burned landscape; you
want to plant again,” he and other ecologists
fear that unchecked tree felling could de-
stroy another third of the valley landscape.
If there’s one thing Newhouser wants to
tell people living in a fire-damaged land-
scape, he says it’s this: “I’m pleading with
people to stop, take a deep breath, and con-
sider the impact of chain-sawing every tree
in their backyard out of fear.”
The Sonoma Land Trust has three prop-
erties in the Sonoma Valley that were hit by
fire — Stuart Creek Ranch and Glen Oaks
Ranch on either side of Highway 12 near
Cavedale Road, and a third property high up
Cavedale near the crest of the Mayacamas,
called Secret Pasture.
Glen Oaks Ranch is adjacent to Bouverie
Preserve, which was extensively burned
in the first 24 hours of the fire. Glen Oaks,
too, was hit hard by the Nuns fire. An adobe
barn that could date back to the 1850s was
all but destroyed, especially unfortunate
as it had recently undergone an expensive
Mayacamas Volunteer Fire District Chief Mike Jablonowski displays a medal awarded to the agency.
renovation. It may be a total loss: “It’s on the
National Register of Historic Places,” said
SLT’s Neale. “It’s a cultural resource — we
don’t have to repair it but feel a sense of obli-
gation. It’s a property bequeathed to us.”
Across Stuart Creek from the barn is
the main Glen Oaks House, built in 1868,
restored in 1952, and added to the national
historic register in 1994. John McCaull lives
in the Glen Oaks House as a caretaker while
he does his job as the SLT’s Land Acquisi-
tion Program Manager.
Late in the evening of Oct. 8 McCaull
knew there were fires in Kenwood, but it
wasn’t until a smoky blast triggered motion
lights around 1 a.m. that he knew he was in
real trouble.
“One quick look to the north revealed
a wall of treetop flames coming our way,
curling around the vineyard into the wild
hillsides of the Mayacamas. My daughter,
Grace, my partner Emily, our cat Felix, and I
were out of there in 10 minutes,” he recalled.
They could move back over two months lat-
er, once the smoke damage had been cleaned
and fire debris cleared. McCaull considers
himself lucky they were only displaced.
The fires hit the other SLT properties in
the Sonoma Valley as well. Stuart Creek
Hill, a 14-acre property of oak woodland and
native grasslands directly across Highway 12
from the Glen Oaks Ranch, endured less
destructive, cooler fires, with impacts that
were “what a fire ecologist would expect — a
loss of grasslands, but it’s recovering,” said
Neale.
The third property, 340-acre Secret Pasture,
adjacent to Bouverie, stretches up the Mayac-
amas. It’s a chaparral zone higher in the hills,
with manzanita and chamise, Douglas fir and
knobcone pine. Ash and her husband, Marc
CHRISTIAN KALLEN / SONOMA INDEX-TRIBUNE
Schwager, put an additional 60 acres into a
conservation easement contiguous with the
Secret Pasture. “That lasts forever,” said Ash.
While the ability of the fire-adapted ecolo-
gy of the Sonoma Valley to regenerate itself
is his positive message, even Neale found
himself taken aback by the high-intensity
blazes that swept across the Mayacamas.
“Up at the top of Cavedale Road, it looks
like a nuclear bomb went off,” he said. “It
might take 20 years, it might take 30 years …
but it will come back.”
That’s Mayacamas Volunteer Fire Depart-
ment territory.
There are usually 10 active, trained fire-
fighters in the department; when the fires
struck, there were just eight. Five of them
lost their homes even as they fought to save
their neighbors’ properties.
The volunteer fire department is now
fully staffed; although former fire chief Will
Horn has moved to Mendocino after losing
his house to the fire. Former assistant Mike
Jablonowski was made fire chief — a “bat-
tlefield promotion,” he calls it.
Community interest has surged in the fire
department, despite the fact that 98 percent
of the Mayacamas burned, according to Ash.
Some people still don’t have their power
back and many wells are compromised.
There are now 11 firefighters in the de-
partment. But Ash says it’s too soon to tell
how many of the almost 50 residents who
lost their homes will rebuild.
“Several people I know personally won’t
be rebuilding,” she said. “They’re a little bit
older, and the time it would take to rebuild
could be years and years. Often 40 or 50 per-
cent of people don’t rebuild after a fire; we’ll
have to wait five years out to see if that
statistic holds.”

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THE PRESS DEMOCRAT • SUNDAY, JUNE 24, 2018 H11

Rebuild NORTH BAY

CHRISTOPHER CHUNG / THE PRESS DEMOCRAT

A revival at F
Ben Benson, cultural resources coordinator, examines a burned live oak tree on Three Tree Hill on June 15 at Pepperwood Preserve outside Santa Rosa.

By GUY KOVNER
THE PRESS DEMOCRAT

rom a hilltop in the Mayacamas Mountains, the

Pepperwood
view is spectacular.
Massive Mount St. Helena looms to the east;
the Santa Rosa Plain stretches for miles to the
west, and the surrounding gentle hills are cloaked in
tall grass mostly turned summer gold, waving in an
afternoon breeze.
Green tree canopies seem to cover the more distant
forests.
To a casual observer, the sprawling 3,200-acre Pep-
perwood Preserve, a place dedicated to conservation

Stewards see renewal in preserve scorched by science and education, looks a lot like it did a year ago
before the worst wildfires in California history ignited

Tubbs fire — considered an agent of rebirth

in October.
But a solitary black oak tree atop the hill attests

TURN TO PEPPERWOOD » PAGE H14

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H12
Jeanne Wirka, director of stewardship and resident biologist at Bouverie Preserve,
Following
surveys the wildflower bloom in April on the property in Glen Ellen.
the wildfire’s path
Mountain bikers cross the threshold of the lake Ilsanjo Dam on June 18 in Trione-Annadel State Park, where a pair of walks go through fire-affected areas in the 5,500-acre open space.
By TRACY SALCEDO
A
FOR THE PRESS DEMOCRAT
t this point post-fire, the whispering bells
have begun to fade. They’re an under-
stated wildflower, clusters of nodding
blooms now a papery ivory. But they are
everywhere. Rounding a bend on the Lower Bald
Mountain Trail in Sugarloaf Ridge State Park, as
oak woodland gives way to chaparral, the Sono-
ma Ecology Center’s Tony Passantino points out
bunches of them.
But just wait, he advises.
And sure enough, farther along, an entire slope
explodes with whispering bells. They are as dense
as the bleaching wild oat grass in the meadow
California poppies join in the colorful cacophony of wild-
below, as dense as the coyote brush, chamise and
flowers rising from the ashes of the burned landscape on
manzanita that burned here. There’s no wind on
this late spring morning but if there were, the
March 26 at Pepperwood Preserve near Santa Rosa.
flowers would be softly chiming. Bend close and
sniff: They smell like Sweet Tarts, of all things.
Passantino is delighted. He’s never seen any-
thing like this, and neither has anyone else on
Team Sugarloaf, the partnership that manages
the state park. You can find whispering bells in an
ordinary season, but this kind of profusion hasn’t
been seen in 50 years, since the last time these
hills burned. The same kind of rare display is hap-
pening down valley at the Bouverie Preserve in
Glen Ellen, where the normally elusive redwood
lily can be found everywhere, says Jeanne Wirka,
director of stewardship for Audubon Canyon
Ranch.
And the oat grass? Passantino, Wirka, and Neill
Fogarty, supervising ranger at Trione-Annadel
State Park have all watched it take off. Octo-
ber’s wildfires supercharged the soils with “a
megadose of nutrients,” Wirka explains, spawn-
ing a bumper crop that stands 8 feet high in plac-
es. As the grasses cure and fire season progresses
the potential fuel load is a little worrisome, but
it’s also important to observe and document the
abundance.
Most of us, fire gods willing, will only have
one opportunity to witness the rebirth of nature
following wildfire. And it’s happening in parks all
around us. Here are some places where the effects
can be easily observed with a short walk.
Bouverie Preserve
When the Nuns fire swept through Bouverie,
part of a hub of public open spaces and preserves
converging in Glen Ellen, it almost immediately
presented a lesson in fire ecology. Land managers
had done a prescribed burn on a portion of the
property, and the difference in how the fire be-
haved on that parcel presented an instant oppor-
There’s no better time to get outdoors
and witness the landscape’s recovery
at the county’s parks and open spaces
tunity to study the effect of that fire management
protocol in the field. The rest of the preserve took
a hard hit, including loss of much of the infra-
structure that supported its educational programs
as well as man-made improvements along the
trails themselves, like bridges. But by the time fall
rolls around, Wirka said guided hikes for stu-
dent groups and the public will be offered — and
there’ll be more months of change to observe.
For information, call 415-868-9244, ext. 306, or go
to egret.org/visit_bouverie.
Hood Mountain Regional Park
and Open Space Preserve
Located along the high ground of the Mayac-
amas above Kenwood, about 60 percent of Hood
Mountain’s 1,750 acres were torched by the Nuns
fire. Drier conditions and extreme winds inten-
sified the firestorm in the southern reaches of
the park, leaving hillsides of skeletal forest and
charred earth in its wake. Recovery will be slower
here, but still worth witnessing. To check it out,
begin hiking at the Pythian Road entrance, climb-
ing the Lower Johnson Ridge Trail to the Panora-
ma Ranch Trail, then continuing on the Upper
Johnson Ridge Trail to the summit. The total
round-trip involves significant elevation change,
so wear good shoes and carry plenty of water. The
Sugar-Hood Shuttle is another option, accommo-
dating a point-to-point hike from Hood Mountain
to Sugarloaf; details are on the Sugarloaf website.
For information, call 707-539-8092 or go to parks.
sonomacounty.ca.gov/Visit/Hood-Mountain-
Regional-Park-and-Preserve.
Pepperwood Preserve
Perched in the western Mayacamas between
THE PRESS DEMOCRAT • SUNDAY, JUNE 24, 2018
Wildflowers bloom in the dried grasses, above,
and among ferns, left, along the trails June 18
at Trione-Annadel State Park in Santa Rosa.
PHOTOS BY KENT PORTER / THE PRESS DEMOCRAT
Santa Rosa and Calistoga, Pepperwood was
directly in the line of the Tubbs fire. More than
80 percent of the preserve’s 3,200 acres of wildland
burned, along with some structures. Known for
the diversity of its habitat — prior to the fire more
than 750 native plant varieties and 150 species
of wildlife could be found in its woodlands and
meadows — the preserve’s land managers are now
monitoring and documenting recovery of, among
other things, the composition and succession of
vegetation as the landscape heals, and the wildlife
that makes use of those different plants. The pre-
serve is open to the public for volunteer workdays,
classes, and public walks, and the staff has incor-
porated fire ecology into its curriculum.
For information, call 707-591-9310 or go to
pepperwoodpreserve.org.
Sugarloaf Ridge State Park
Team Sugarloaf has created a Fire Recovery
Walk that traverses from an unburned meadow
through a succession of torched ecosystems in-
cluding grassland, oak woodland, and chaparral.
The 2-mile loop leads hikers past scorched-earth
shadows of trees fallen before fire moved through,
where downed wood burned so hot it killed the
seed bank in the understory and altered soil chem-
istry. Nature will take its course here, Passantino
says, as it also will in the canopies of the surviv-
ing oaks, where a powdery mildew has coated
the leaves that budded soon after the blaze. Link
the Lower Bald Mountain Trail with the paved
Bald Mountain Trail and then the Stern Trail
to complete the recovery loop. Stretch it out by
heading right and uphill on Bald Mountain Trail
and returning via the Vista and Meadow Trails for
a 4-mile option.
For information, call 707-833-5712 or go to sugar-
loafpark.org.
Trione-Annadel State Park
Ranger Fogarty recommends a pair of walks
through fire-affected areas in the 5,500-acre park.
The first is a 5.5 to 6-mile round-trip from the
Channel Drive trailhead, traveling up the Warren
Richardson Trail (aka the Richardson fire road)
to Lake Ilsanjo, and then making a clockwise
loop around the lake. The route reaches into
regions that “burned hot,” Fogarty says, where
fire torched stands of madrone and Douglas fir.
The second option makes a long loop linking the
Lawndale and Schultz Trails outside of Kenwood
and passes the Ledson Marsh, which got a “hair-
cut” during the fire — where the reeds burned off,
opening the water to view.
For information, call 707-539-3911 or go to
www.parks.ca.gov/?page_id=480
H14 THE PRESS DEMOCRAT • SUNDAY, JUNE 24, 2018

Wildlife survives and thrives

County’s creatures Insects help to recycle dead leaves forest or chaparral, and is essential
and plants, and pollinate the flowers to the long-term health of ecosys-

rebounding, offer
and plants that spring up in the ash- tems, which have developed after
es, helping to ensure they repopulate millennia to live with fires.

unique glimpse
burned areas. California is home
to more than 1,600 species of bees
alone, for example, more, Heydon
at response to fires says, than can be found in all of the
eastern United States.
By STEPHEN NETT Birds are also mobile, and readi-
Tony Nelson, Stewardship Project
Manager with Sonoma Land Trust,
agreed that the wildlife may be less
affected by the fires than by steadi-
ly encroaching human structures,
which can reduce and disrupt their

T
FOR THE PRESS DEMOCRAT
o experts tracking the status
of wildlife after last year’s
fires, one thing stands out.
It appears the creatures
living in the fire zones are recover-
ing more rapidly than their human
neighbors. As the complex process
of restoring people’s homes, lives
and neighborhoods grinds slowly
forward, nature’s wild inhabitants
are rebounding with surprising
speed and efficiency.
Eight months after the fires,
Cyndy Shafer, resource manager for Sleepy Hollow neighborhood of Santa Rosa.
the State Parks District that includes
Sugarloaf and Trione-Annadel,
reports “We don’t notice a great
difference in wildlife numbers.”
While there were certainly casual-
ties and dramatic changes in ground
cover and habitat, overall, the resil-
ience of wildlife in post-fire Sonoma
County has been both encouraging
and remarkable to observe. Ani-
mal cams at several locations have
recently spotted black bear, puma,
bobcats and other large mammals
moving back.
How wildlife dealt with the fire
here is a matter of intense interest.
For naturalists, park and wild space
managers, the recent burns offer a
historically unique opportunity to
learn what actually happens when
flames sweep through local ecosys-
tems. Studies and observation proj-
ects are now underway in preserves
like Pepperwood and Bouverie, in
regional and state parks, and pro-
tected spaces such as the Glen Oaks,
Sears Point and Sonoma Mountain
properties managed by Sonoma
Land Trust, which all suffered
during the fires.
The evidence so far shows na-
ture’s inhabitants have interesting
and diverse strategies for coping,
and even prospering, when fires
come.
Not every creature flees the smoke
and flame, for example. Certain
insects, like the charcoal beetle,
JOHN BURGESS / THE PRESS DEMOCRAT
A house finch perches on a limb in the
actually fly toward fire. A bit bigger
than a rice grain, they’re able to
detect smoke from burning trees
at considerable distances, in one
study, over 60 miles away. As they
fly toward the smoky source, they
expose tiny structures under their
forearms which, remarkably, can
detect heat. This guides them to the
fires. Firefighters often complain
about the swarming beetles, which
bite and climb under clothes.
When the flames subside, females
find logs that have recently burned,
some still smoldering, to lay eggs.
By being first to the newly burned
wood, they have an advantage over
other wood beetles, and their larva
eat wood that hasn’t had a chance to
entirely dry out.
There are even wasps that come
to fires just to hunt the charcoal
beetles.
Although they’re usually over-
looked in favor of the big animals,
insects are the most populous and
diverse wildlife in our entire post-
fire ecosystem. Steve Heydon, senior
scientist at the Bohart Museum of
Entomology at UC Davis, points out
they’re also key to other species’
recovery. Insects are the invisible
foundation of the food chain, sus-
taining many types of birds, small
mammals, amphibians, reptiles and
other creatures, which in turn keep
the bigger animals fed.
ly return to feed on the insects. At
Pepperwood Preserve, which burned
extensively, more than 120 species of
birds were recorded before the fire.
Nicole Barden, Environmental Edu-
cator, believes there’s been changes
in population in the burn areas,
including an increased number of
lazuli buntings, which have stun-
ning bright blue feathers. They’re
a “fire following” species, she says,
one of the birds that are known to be
attracted to burned areas.
Another tiny migratory bird
has come back for the spring, to
Barden’s relief, the tiny brown
grasshopper sparrow. Quite rare in
California, it has been recorded for
several seasons at Pepperwood. The
name probably reflects its call, a
thin high trill, like a cricket. Barden,
who lost her home in the fires at the
preserve, has also seen an increase
in raptors, like sharp-shinneds and
Cooper hawks.
They’re after the local species of
burrowing small mammals. They
weather fire by plugging surface
holes with dirt when they sense
fire coming, and hunkering down
in their underground nests, where
there’s oxygen and often stashes of
food. They may remain there until
new shoots and greens appear to eat,
before venturing out.
One important feature of the fires
here, tied to wildlife recovery, is their
patchwork of intensity. Like a mosaic,
lightly burned pockets leave spaces
for wildlife, seeds and eggs to survive,
which then spread into the surround-
ing regions, speeding recovery.
“On the whole,” Shafer notes,
“while there have been tragic
human costs and losses, most fires
don’t have a lasting serious effect in
wildlands here. In fact, they tend to
enrich the diversity of plants and
animals. They remove old brush
and recycle nutrients, open areas to
sunlight and create space for new
plants.”
This turnover allows a succession
of species, which renews old growth
habitat.
As wildlife cameras at Pepper-
wood and elsewhere documented,
animals are responsive to fires, and
many avoided or escaped ahead of
the flames.
But when their natural corridors
of movement are blocked, or they’re
isolated in islands without exits,
they aren’t able to flee. Highway 12,
Arnold Road, and Highway 101
where it crosses San Antonio Creek
are all obstacles blocking passage-
ways between habitat, Reynolds
explains. Sonoma Land Trust has
worked with other stakeholders for
years to create and maintain wildlife
underpasses at those locations, and
work with private property owners
to make improvements that would
allow safe passage and movement.
“Week three or four after the fire,”
Nelson said, ”our camera under
Highway 12 found animals were
again using the passageway.” Years
of work have been invested in broad-
er efforts, with the goal of linking
habitat in the Bay Area, Marin
County, Sonoma and the Mayacam-
as, up to Berryessa.
Nelson, who has had experience
managing controlled burns, sees the
landscape from a different perspec-
tive, like Shafer and others who
deal with wildlife on a daily basis.
Disturbances happen, and nature is
dynamic. Many species have evolved
to respond to, and even rely on those
changes. Frequent managed fires,
a practice of native people here for
thousands of years, may again be an
important future practice, both to
ensure the health of the natural en-
vironment, and protect against out
of control and vastly more destruc-
tive raging wildfires.
“Fire is not tragic for wildlife,”
Nelson says. “Fire is part of the
natural regime.”
Stephen Nett is a Bodega Bay-based
Certified California Naturalist,
writer and speaker. Contact him at
snett@californiasparks.com.

PEPPERWOOD it could happen again. “All it needs is an ignition

CONTINUED FROM H11
to the impact of the wind-driven Tubbs fire that
roared east from Calistoga over nearly the entire
preserve en route to inflicting terror and loss of
life in Santa Rosa.
“This one didn’t make it,” said Ben Benson, the
preserve’s cultural resources coordinator, pausing
to touch the gnarled black oak he considered an
old friend. “Feels like a tombstone to me.”
Fire scorched 90 percent of the preserve, black-
ening grass, brush and trees and destroying two
houses, two outbuildings and an observatory with
a 19th-century brass telescope. The $9 million
Dwight Center withstood the fierce flames, as it
was built to do, but it took about
two months to get preserve staff
back at work inside the concrete
walls.
Still, Lisa Micheli, president
of the Pepperwood Foundation,
doesn’t consider the landscape
damaged.
“Fire is an agent of rebirth and
Ben recovery,” she said, calling it a
Benson “critical part of the landscape.”
As soon as the preserve’s
woodlands were deemed safe to
enter, staffers and other scientists
began assessing the fire’s immedi-
ate impact and devising long-term
studies to inform future firefight-
ing strategies and forest manage-
ment practices.
“We didn’t change our mis-
sion,” she said. “We changed our
Lisa task list.”
Micheli Michael Gillogly, the preserve
manager who has lived on the
property for 24 years, said Pepper-
wood enjoyed a bumper crop of
wildflowers this spring — yellow,
white, blue and violet — and
grasses that are now up to 6 feet
high, taller than usual.
The abundance was nurtured
by a “burst of nitrogen” from the
Michael ash of incinerated plants, he said.
Gillogly Manzanita seeds, stored below
ground, need fire to germinate.
Knobcone pine trees readily burn, but the cones
need heat to open and release seeds, he said.
“The plants have evolved with fire,” Gillogly
said. “Ecologically, it wasn’t a bad thing at all.”
Greg de Nevers, a former resident biologist at
Pepperwood for 15 years, surveyed the property
in April and May and identified 43 native plants
he deemed “fire followers” for their propensity to
spring from soil-stored seeds in the wake of fires,
including four that had never been recorded on
the property.
One of those, an annual herb with a small red
to pink flower called Brewer’s redmaids, was
found in several spots, including a nearly solid
500-square-foot hilltop patch.
In his report, de Nevers said he felt “incredibly
privileged to be able to witness the wonders of the
natural world as the land and its inhabitants are
transformed by this event.”
“Feeling the resurgence of life from the ashes
inspires confidence in the resilience of the bio-
sphere,” he said.
CHRISTOPHER CHUNG / THE PRESS DEMOCRAT
A burned black oak tree sprouts new chutes from its
trunk at Pepperwood Preserve on June 15.
Benson, who is monitoring the preserve’s black
oaks, found mixed impacts from the fire.
“I see some that are so hideously burned that
it’s like a graveyard,” he said. All that’s left of
some black oaks is white ash on the ground, while
30 feet away another tree remains standing.
In a black oak grove near the top of Pepper-
wood’s Redwood Canyon, Benson pointed out the
blackened trunk of a slender tree, with a small
branch bearing green leaves 20 feet above ground.
“It’s amazing,” he said.
Black oaks are among the most fire-resistant of
oaks thanks to their thick bark and deep taproot.
One of nine oak species at Pepperwood, black oaks
were prized by the Wappo, the people who inhab-
ited the land going back 8,000 years, Benson said,
based on dating of obsidian tools he’s found there.
Overall, the black oak survival rate is higher
than 50 percent, he said.
The depths of Redwood Canyon are a surreal
area, Benson said, with the charred-black spikes
of redwoods and huge firs towering to the sky
mixed with felled trees that crashed onto the can-
yon walls or formed bridges across it.
“Yet high in the canopy, above the graveyard,
some redwoods have green growth,” he said.
“There is renewal there.”
Everyone at Pepperwood knew the place —
home to 750 varieties of native plants and 150 wild-
life species, including black bears, mountain lions,
bobcats, coyotes, foxes and blacktail deer — was in
harm’s way.
The Tubbs fire, which killed 22 people and
destroyed about 3,300 homes in Sonoma County,
followed virtually the same path as the Hanly fire
in 1964, pushed by strong winds from Calistoga to
the edge of Santa Rosa. Healthy redwood trees at
Pepperwood were left with black scars 40 feet up
their trunks.
In 2013, Gillogly stood on an east-facing slope
at Pepperwood raked by the Hanly fire and said
source,” he said. “It could burn any time.”
Since the Tubbs fire, Pepperwood has become
a “living laboratory” for a host of researchers,
Micheli said.
The Sonoma County Water Agency paid the U.S.
Geological Survey nearly $140,000 for a yearlong
field study aimed at determining the risks of
flooding, landslides and erosion on Pepperwood’s
slopes.
In particular, experts are conducting tests to
determine the degree to which the fire created
a “hydrophobic layer” atop the soil, a crust that
would repel water, said Jay Jasperse, chief engi-
neer and director of groundwater management
for the water agency.
When winter rains come, the study intends to
assess whether the fire resulted in an increased
flow of surface water, he said.
Micheli, a watershed scientist, said the local re-
search is valuable because most of what Cal Fire
knows about post-fire risks comes from the Sierra
and Southern California, much different ecosys-
tems than North Coast woodlands.
Pepperwood’s experts are also taking cues from
an advisory council of Wappo tribal members,
who still revere the preserve as their homeland.
Benson said the Wappo developed over thou-
sands of years a “scientific knowledge of extraor-
dinary depth and nuance.”
About twice a decade, the tribe set fires that
harmlessly burned grass and brush, preserving
open woodlands and lush meadows that sustained
deer and elk, providing food for the Wappo and
maintaining an ideal “park land environment,”
Benson said.
Europeans and subsequently American settlers
missed that message, suppressing wildland fires
and allowing Douglas fir and other vegetation to
grow densely among the oaks.
Those thickets created a massive fuel load vul-
nerable to fire, and expanding Douglas fir popu-
lations also cut off the oaks from sunlight, and in
some cases took over former oak woodlands.
Gillogly said he has learned that “getting fire
on the ground” is the key to sound forest manage-
ment, where appropriate. But now, overgrown for-
ests need to be thinned before they can be burned,
and Pepperwood has found the conventional “lop
and scatter” technique — cutting felled trees into
pieces and leaving them in place — doesn’t always
pay off.
“It’s basically like putting firewood on the
ground,” Micheli said. Given time, the logs would
decompose, but until then they are potential wild-
fire fuel, she said.
Pepperwood is evaluating its options, which in-
clude chipping the unwanted trees into small bits
and scattering them like mulch, or burning small
piles of wood to consume fuels.
“It’s really an evolution in environmental sci-
ence,” Micheli said. “We realize you can’t just leave
the land alone and have it stay ecologically healthy.
People are critical to the health of the land.”
On a recent foray into Redwood Canyon, Benson
said he watched a healthy young black bear run
below him, across the creekbed and up the oppo-
site slope.
“The bear’s message of vitality and healing
nourished my soul with hope for the future,” he
said.
You can reach Staff Writer Guy Kovner at 707-
521-5457 or guy.kovner@pressdemocrat.com. On
Twitter @guykovner.
THE PRESS DEMOCRAT • SUNDAY, JUNE 24, 2018
“Wildfire prevention needs to be considered as a layered defense.”
BEN NICHOLLS, Cal Fire’s pre-fire division chief for Sonoma, Lake and Napa counties
An effective strategy
A controlled burn conducted by Cal Fire consumes brush on the face of the Coyote Valley dam Thursday at Lake Mendocino in Ukiah. The brush is burned early to cut the fire risk and for train-
to limit fire danger
Controlled burns reduce
fuel for blazes, help foster
better health for ecosystems
By GLEN MARTIN
I
FOR THE PRESS DEMOCRAT
t has long been gospel that it takes fire to fight
fire — wildfires, specifically.
Burning out brush that would otherwise
feed encroaching wildfire is a highly effective
practice, and often is the only way to gain control
of a big blaze.
But fire also can be used as a preventive mea-
sure, a means of avoiding catastrophic wildfires.
By burning out heavy vegetation and dead wood
under ideal conditions — low wind, relatively high
humidity and low temperatures — the destructive
force of any eventual wildfire can be minimized.
Such so-called prescribed burning is a standard
tool for wildland management agencies. When em-
ployed on a landscape scale, wildfire risk over large
and remote areas can be reduced. Moreover, there
are significant environmental benefits. Burning out
brush, downed wood and thick stands of saplings re-
turns nutrients to the soil in the form of ashes, kills
insect pests, improves growing conditions for older,
larger trees and can even improve stream and spring
flows. Also, California’s wild ecosystems evolved
with wildfire. Many of the state’s native plants need
periodic low-level fires to thrive, or even reproduce.
Some trees and shrubs are “serotinous,” meaning
they require fire to develop or release their seeds.
But national forests are one thing, and populat-
ed areas with a mix of forests, homes and agricul-
tural lands are another.
The North Bay fires were driven by three
primary factors: heavy winds, low humidity and
heavy wildland fuels. If any one of those three
components had been eliminated or reduced, the
destruction would’ve been reduced immensely.
There’s nothing that can be done about the
weather, but fuels are another matter. So should
we ramp up prescribed fire for so-called “interface”
areas where development meets the wild lands?
As with many endeavors, it’s all about location,
said Ben Nicholls, Cal Fire’s pre-fire division chief
for Sonoma, Lake and Napa counties.
“Wildfire prevention needs to be considered as
a layered defense,” says Nicholls, “so from that
aspect, prescribed burning is best used on a land-
scape scale.”
Why? Because even a prescribed burn is, tech-
nically, a wildfire. Fire can escape established fire
lines. That’s not a big deal in a national forest,
where the burn may be miles from the nearest
structure. But it’s another matter entirely if a burn
is contemplated near a luxury home development
on a hillside. A modest breakout that would only
scorch a few trees in a remote stand of conifers
could destroy several homes in an interface area.
For effective wildfire prevention, said Nicholls,
homeowners must take direct responsibility for
the areas around their homes. That means remov-
ing or at least greatly reducing flammable vegeta-
tion within a 100-foot radius.
Beyond that perimeter, Nicholls said, community
or state agencies can create shaded fuel-breaks.
These are relatively wide swaths of forested land
along roads or around developed areas that have
been thinned. Such fuel breaks typically are wood-
ed, but the trees are widely separated and the forest
floor is cleared of wood detritus. Trees and branch-
es cut during the thinning process can either be
chipped on site or stacked into “slash” piles and
Cal Fire, local Sonoma County firefighters and a National Park Service crew move toward the second phase of a
controlled burn during training at the Bouverie Preserve in Glen Ellen.
burned when temperature and humidity is optimal.
“Shaded fuel breaks interfere with the fuel
ladder, the flammable vegetation from the forest
floor to the tops of the trees,” said Nicholls. “They
help protect communities from fires coming in,
and they also have the added benefit of serving as
fire lines for possible prescribed burns in wildland
areas beyond developed zones.”
There are a couple of caveats about shaded fuel
breaks, though: it takes a lot of time and labor
to create them, and they’re not a one-shot deal.
Eleven state Department of Corrections hand
crews have been cutting fuel breaks in Cal Fire’s
Sonoma-Lake-Napa unit, said Nicholls. But that’s
not a lot of manpower, given the unit comprises
2 million acres. Plus, the crews are short-hand-
ed, Nicholls said, and the situation is unlikely to
improve anytime soon.
“With mandated reductions in prison popu-
lations, we’re losing the (minimum security)
inmates who can do this kind of work,” Nicholls
said. “Also, you can’t just go in and cut a fuel
break and walk away. You have to go back in every
five years or so and maintain it. That requires a
significant and long-term commitment.”
Spencer Andreis, a battalion chief for the
Sonoma Valley Fire and Rescue Authority, said
prescribed fires yield significant benefits both
in terms of reduced wildfire risk and healthier
wildland ecosystems. But local fire agencies don’t
have the resources necessary for ambitious and
safe prescribed burning, he said.
“We’ve assisted Cal Fire with prescribed burns in
our area, but they’ve been minor projects,” Andreis
said. “Prescribed burning in interface areas is
complex and difficult. It can be very challenging.
It’s not just the risk (to homes) from the fire itself.
Air quality is also a critical factor. Even controlled
burns put up a lot of smoke, and if the wind shifts
unexpectedly, it can affect large numbers of people
who have respiratory issues. You really have to
take the public health issues into account.”
In many cases, said Andreis, mechanical meth-
ods are a safer if generally more expensive way to
reduce fuels in urban interfaces. Such approaches
involve removing vegetation by hand or heavy
equipment, and then chipping the material.
“You target someplace that could really benefit
from breaking up the fuel ladder but is probably
restricted in area, such as a development located
at the top of a ridgeline,” said Andreis. “But again,
you have to remember that any benefit you get is
temporary. Fuel breaks remove some of the risk
H17
PHOTOS BY KENT PORTER / THE PRESS DEMOCRAT
for a while, but grasses grow back each year, and
brush and timber return in a few years. Long-
term protection requires long-term commitment
to funding and crews.”
Perspectives can differ to some degree among
different agencies. Scott Westrope, a deputy fire
chief for the Santa Rosa Fire Department, general-
ly is dubious about the value of prescribed fire on
urban edges.
“In any prescribed firing operation, the condi-
tions must be ideal to ensure safety and control,”
Westrope said in an email response to questions.
“Fuel and weather conditions need to be aligned to
balance complete consumption of unwanted fuels,
while maintaining the ability to control the burn.
That being said, even in ideal conditions, we do
not feel that prescribed burns are the most appro-
priate method of vegetation management in our
suburban wildland interface and intermix. The
Santa Rosa Fire Department supports mechanical
and manual vegetation management as the safest,
most controllable and environmentally protective
means of risk reduction.”
In any case, prescribed burning isn’t a panacea.
It may reduce risk, but it won’t eliminate it. And
that’s especially the case with extreme weather
conditions, such as those that characterized the
North Bay fires.
“We have to remember that nature can trump
you,” said Andreis. “Say there’s a development
adjacent to a 300-acre area that had been treat-
ed with prescribed fire. There’s still going to be
extreme risk to those homes if you have 70 mph
winds pushing a fire, as we saw in the North Bay
last year. When you have fires spotting a mile or
more ahead of the main fire, any (precautionary)
measure you took may be inadequate.”
Nicholls said prescribed fire is a necessary tool
for appropriate areas “because there will be fire
on the landscape.”
“We can introduce fire at a time that suits us,
when it burns with low intensity,” he said. “Or fire
can occur in late summer or fall with dry fuels and
strong offshore winds, destroying thousands of
homes and turning everything into a moonscape.
The biggie that I want to put out there is that there
is no single tool for all the jobs. Property owners
need to harden their homes and properly maintain
defensible space. Beyond that, we need to reduce
fuels through mechanical means or prescribed
fire. People always think fire happens somewhere
else, but it inevitably touches every community.
It’s a matter of when, not if.”
H18 THE PRESS DEMOCRAT • SUNDAY, JUNE 24, 2018

Planting to reduce fire risks SOME OPTIONS FOR PERENNIALS

Make your landscaping more drought flowers to very flammable
nonnative grasses. These
tolerant with variety of trees, shrubs plants grow quickly with
winter rains, set seed and
By KATE FREY the periodic fires that are die early in the spring.
yet fires historically occur
there only about once or
twice a century. They are
often severe, eliminating
most standing vegetation.
■ California buckwheats
Eriogonum umbellatum
polyanthum or E. grande
■ Monkeyflower (Mimulus)
■ Calandrinia grandiflora
rubescens ■ Seaside daisy (Erigeron
glaucus)
■ Bearded iris
■ Evening primrose (Oeno-
■ Sunrose (Helianthemum thera)
nummularium)
■ California fuchsia (Epilo-

O
FOR THE PRESS DEMOCRAT
ur homes and
businesses are
set within and
adjacent to wild
landscapes in Sonoma
County. In our leisure
time, we walk, bike or
drive through their
majestic scenes. People
travel from all over the
world to enjoy the bucolic
and rugged appeal of the
Wine Country.
Yet our intense en-
gagement with these
environments has created
a wide urban-wildland
interface that is suscepti-
ble to catastrophic fire, an
altogether more destruc-
tive and deadly force than
a natural aspect of most
California ecosystems.
Homeowners can help
protect their properties by
planting landscapes with
less flammable plants and
trees and maintaining
them in such a way that
will reduce the chance
of fire spreading. Here is
some background and tips
to follow to do your part to
help reduce fire risk.
The golden hills that
are a ubiquitous feature
of California’s identity
are mostly composed of
non-native grasses and
forbs. We have both pur-
posely and inadvertently
converted our natural
understory of perennial
grasses and annual wild-
They are highly flamma-
ble (often called “flashy”),
and allow fires to spread
rapidly. They are danger-
ous when they invade or
are adjacent to shrub or
chaparral plant communi-
ties, as the grasses act as
ladders into the flammable
shrub overstory. These
grasses also dry much ear-
lier in the season than oth-
er vegetation, extending
the seasonal fire danger.
Chaparral, the most
common plant community
in the state, is composed
of densely growing shrubs
such as scrub oak, manza-
nita, chamise and cean-
othus that form a closed
stand over time. It is a
fire-dependent ecosystem,
Many shrubs and trees
of this ecosystem either
sprout from the base, or
their seeds are stimu-
lated to grow by fire and
the resulting bare soil.
Fires rejuvenate these
areas. In conifer forests,
fires were more frequent,
and usually patchy,
and lighter in intensity,
mostly consuming the
understory and young
trees with branches that
reach the ground.
With the advent of effec-
tive fire suppression, for-
ests are widely considered
more dense and even-aged
than they were naturally.
As a result, fires are now
often severe and enter and
spread in tree crowns.
In oak woodlands, trees
and shrubs both grow
■ Penstemons
bium)
TREES AND LARGER SHRUB OPTIONS
■ Dogwoods, Japanese or other maples, flowering crab apple,
pomegranate, citrus, crape myrtle or eastern redbud.
SOME SHRUB OPTIONS
■ Potentilla fruticosa ■ Shade shrubs
■ Coprosma repens ■ Daphne
■ Viburnum tinus “Spring ■ Sarcococca
Bouquet” ■ Osmanthus
■ Mockorange (Philadelphus ■ California currant
lewisii), or Korean Lilac
(Syringa meyeri “Palibin”) or ■ Oregon grape (Mahonia)
Sasanqua camellia. ■ Fuchsia
■ Perennials ■ Dogwood
■ Camellia
■ Creeping thyme
■ Sunrose (Helianthemum) ■ Japanese maple
■ Evening primrose (Oeno- ■ Low-growing shade
thera missouriensis) ■ Bergenia cordifolia
■ Dianthus
■ Coralbells (Heuchera)

NEED PAINT?
singly and in clumps. ■ Coreopsis ■ Columbine
Older hardwood trees ■ Catmint ■ Perennial geraniums
such as oaks, madrone ■ Ornamental oreganos Orig- ■ Pacific Coast hybrid iris
and California bay often

GO TO
anum “Marshall’s Memory,”
have no lower branches as ■ Ferns
“Santa Cruz,” “Bristol Cross”
a result of age. They are ■ Liriope
usually set in wide expans-
■ Trailing verbena
■ Ceratostigma plumbagi-

A PAINT STORE!!! es of dry grasses that are ■ Agapanthus

highly flammable. Winds
can act to move flame
from ground level into tree
canopies.
Choosing appropriate
plants for a fire-prone
landscape, strategically
siting and pruning plants,
minimizing dry fuels
such as grass, and ade-
quately watering plants
can have an effect on how
landscapes behave in the
PAINT STORE event of a fire. Larger
landscapes need to have
Automotive, House & Specialty Coatings defensible space around
structures. Defensible
space is defined as space
■ Asters
■ Salvias, most
■ Kangaroo paw Anigozan-
thus “Amber Velvet”
■ Grass: Muhlenbergia capillaris
of combustible fuels. In
these spaces, we can still
lessen the chance that our
gardens will contribute
to spreading fire to other
homes. Minimizing the
use of or thinning highly
flammable trees such as
Monterey pines, junipers
and eucalyptus, irrigating
noides
■ Hummingbird sage (Salvia
spathacea)
■ Bleeding heart (Dicentra)
■ Evergreen candytuft Iberis
sempervirens)
plants that share the same
needs. Pick six to 12 plants
out of each category list
depending on whether
you prefer a simple plant
palette or a varied one,
and group each variety or
repeat them throughout
the garden.
For an all drought-

O ff SERVING SONOMA COUNTY where the vegetation has our plants well, keeping tolerant garden, consider

% in
15BenjaEmxterior SINCE 1906
been designed or modified
and maintained to reduce
flammability, and where
trees, vines, shrubs and
ground covers free of dead
leaves and stems and thin-
using Chinese pistachio
or California buckeye
as specimen trees. For
firefighters can defend a ning dense vegetation, will shrubs, choose California
ore ts st
On Santa Rosa Ave.
Mo roduc uly 31 structure. all make your landscape redbud, serviceberry
P u J nly) 1/2 mile South of Hearn Ave. In an urban or suburban less vulnerable to fire (amelanchier), or crape
w thr & Fives o setting, where houses are destruction. myrtle, widely spaced.
o
N (Gallo n s 707-545-1711 • www.hawleyspaint.com closely spaced, and lot siz- Combine widely spaced They are long-lived, deep
Mon-Fri 8-5:30 • Sat 8:30-5 es are small, houses them- trees and shrubs with non- rooted, floriferous, and
selves form the majority contiguous low-growing wildlife friendly.

cots.org

ANNOUNCING
COTS SERVICE LOCATION IN SANTA ROSA

GRAND OPENING
ON JULY 18, 2018
5:30pm – 8:00pm
575 West College Avenue, Santa Rosa
RSVP at cots.org or 707.765.6530 x 128
• Food from Ann B’s Kitchen
• Wines from Jackson Family Wines
• Lagunitas Beer
COTS is opening a new Santa Rosa office to address the needs of homeless
individuals and families who have been impacted by the fires.

Services include: The 2017

fires stressed
• Rental and deposit assistance
our housing and
• Advocacy, coaching and help employment
with paperwork markets.
• Shared housing opportunities

Funders include Redwood Credit Union Community Fund, Tipping Point

Emergency Relief Fund, County of Sonoma, and many groups, businesses,
and individuals like you.