Leaders of the Santa Barbara County Fire Department recently met to set up three working groups to address major regional fire safety concerns.
“We met as firefighters and realized that we are all working on these areas of concern independently. Unfortunately, when we come up with solutions independently, it has unintended consequences or impacts on our neighboring jurisdictions, ”Mark Hartwig, head of Santa Barbara County Fire Department, told Noozhawk. Greg Fish (Carpinteria-Summerland fire chief) thought, “Why don’t we get our staff together and identify fire and life safety issues and see if we can address them regionally?” “In this way, we have a regional set of standards that we can take back to policy makers. ”
Fish told Noozhawk, “I tried to come up with an idea where we have all the people who represent these different agencies come together and come up with solutions.”
After working with community members, stakeholders and various fire departments, the association of fire chiefs identified three main issues to address: access and parking at the ends and beaches of the county, scattered camping and fires and other safety issues associated with homeless camps.
“We’ve found that the closer we work with common issues, the easier it is for everyone involved, because the communities are so interconnected,” said Kevin Noozhawk, head of Montecito’s fire department.
Taylor leads the task force focused on accessing and parking the trailhead. Rob Hazard, division chief for the Santa Barbara County Fire, leads the dispersed camping task force, and Carpinteria-Summerland Fire Marshal Rob Rappaport oversees the homeless camp group.
“The purpose of the working group is for the three groups to present recommendations, to offer them to the county chiefs and then to transmit them to the respective elected bodies,” Hazard said.
The working group began focusing more on homeless camps and concerns about the associated fire risks, according to Hazard. From January 1 to December 1 last year, the county fire department responded to 45 calls related to fires in homeless camps, Hazard said, and 12 of those incidents were fires.
As firefighters looked deeper into the issue, they began to notice some decline in other related issues, Hazard said.
The scattered campsite was a link to the shelter camp issue, as many residents began to notice a large increase in overnight camping on the side of the road, he added. The cave fire in 2019 was caused by people, and the use of campfires in the mountains presents an extreme risk of fire.
As most of the dispersed campsite takes place on national public forest lands, the county fire services do not have enforcement authority. The camping task force is meeting with Los Padres forestry staff to learn how they can work together, Hazard said.
“Part of these working groups is identifying who has the authority to make regulations and what options are available to that stakeholder group,” he added.
The approach from dispersed camping, overcrowded parking at the ends and beaches of the county was the third problem identified. With the increased use of trailheads, access to the mountains becomes more restricted, which can pose a problem for firefighters in an emergency.
“Right now, we’re in the discovery stage,” Taylor said. “We have information from community members, fire commissioners and other stakeholders, and we are now gathering and verifying it with the implementing agencies.”
In early February, the working groups will regroup and bring back objectives based on the three priorities to provide possible recommendations to those elected or agencies, Fish said.
“It’s a work in progress, but it will really bring clarity to public safety,” he added. “We have to deal with these problems so that people do not die, are seriously injured or create a greater danger. It is unacceptable. ”
Hartwig said: “This will give us at least a uniform set of recommendations in the sense that the same actions we take in one jurisdiction would ideally be standard for others. That way we wouldn’t have those unintended consequences. ”
– Noozhawk staff writer Jade Martinez-Pogue can be contacted at . (JavaScript must be enabled to view this email address). Follow Noozhawk on Twitter: @noozhawk, @NoozhawkNews and @NoozhawkBiz. Sign in with Noozhawk on Facebook.