‘Prescribed burn’ on Sonoma Mountain fires up Diamond A

A controlled burn on Thursday morning, June 10, raised alarms among Diamond A residents who did not feel adequately informed of the fire-prevention exercise.

Area resident Tom Jones called the Index-Tribune shortly before 11 a.m. with his concerns, saying the established development along upper Grove Street east of Sonoma was “enveloped in smoke” and that he could see flames on the crest of Sonoma Mountain from his home.

“Nobody got any notice of this, no Nixle alert, no nothing,” said Jones. He said that a Sonoma County sheriff’s car had come up to the neighborhood, but the officer too was unaware of the controlled burn.

Residents were able to track down a Twitter post from two days earlier about the planned fire-prevention exercise. The Cal Fire news release described a controlled burn planned for June 10 on Sonoma Mountain, in cooperation with Rancho Adobe and Sonoma Valley fire departments, between the hours of 8 a.m. and 5 p.m.

The Cal Fire news release from the Sonoma Lake Napa (counties) Unit, dated June 8, said the prescribed burn would take place at the Mitsui Ranch on the Sonoma Mountain Preserve at the top of Sonoma Mountain. “Residents may see smoke drifting south of this location while the burning is being conducted,” read the release.

Still, said Jones, such notice did not seem adequate to affected residents, given widespread concerns about fire danger and high winds. “We’ve been told to sign up for Nixle and all these alerts, and this comes in via a tweet – a tweet!” he exclaimed.

A Nixle alert from Rancho Adobe Fire was in fact issued at 10:16 a.m. that morning, after the burn was already well underway. “Please be aware there is a controlled burn being conducted on Sonoma Mountain in Penngrove today,” it read.

Diamond A is almost due south of the summit of Sonoma Mountain, closer to the fire location than Penngrove or Petaluma.

A Cal Fire employee at the St. Helena office’s public information line, who would not identify himself, said that their office had issued multiple releases via “social media” – primarily Facebook and Twitter. “Then it’s usually up to whoever else to get it out,” he said, specifying the public information officer, or PIO, of participating fire districts.

Jones contrasted the handling of the Sonoma Mountain burn with that held just a few days earlier at the Van Hoosear Wildflower Preserve, just off Grove Street to the east. That was well-publicized including with article in both print and online editions of the Index-Tribune.

That burn was also technically operated by Sonoma Valley Fire, but it was widely publicized by the Sonoma Ecology Center which manages the wildflower preserve.

Controlled burns are the result of burn permits applied for by property owners with Cal Fire, which then coordinates the assets for performing the burn. Controlled vegetation management burns “are carefully planned and must meet strict criteria for ecological benefit, weather parameters, smoke management, and fire safety guidelines,” according to the June 8 release from Cal Fire, the state Department of Forestry and Fire Protection.

Sarah Gibson, a PIO with Sonoma Valley Fire Department, said in response to a press inquiry, “I wholeheartedly agree with you that local news outlets are a vital information link. I’ll bring this up within our group here and see what we can do to keep this important information loop open and seamless.”

Gibson reported that the June 10 exercise was completed at 12:15 p.m., and involved 27 acres. She said she was the “burn boss” for the Van Hoosear controlled fire on June 4, a job she described as “essentially the incident commander of prescribed burns.”

Such fire management operations are often “prescribed” for a particular area to cleanse it of debris, control invasive species and eliminate other pests, encourage new growth and, perhaps most valuable in the current climate, reduce opportunity for destructive fires. This and more information is available at readyforwildfire.org/forest-health/prescribed-fires.

For Jones and other Diamond A residents, however, focused information on the planned burn would have been more welcome prior to the exercise. “Smoke was obvious and the smell was very strong,” another resident told the Index-Tribune, “Much more so than from the fire at the bottom of Grove,” she said, referring to the June 4 Van Hoosear burn.

There was also an unintended fire on Grove Street, about a quarter mile west of the Van Hoosear Preserve, the previous week, on May 26. That was one of three vegetation fires that erupted in a single afternoon -- one off Mark West Springs Road, another off Highway 12 in eastern Santa Rosa. The Grove fire burned 5 acres, the largest of the three.

So sensitivity to the potential danger of wildfires runs high at Diamond A, which escaped the 2017 Nuns firestorm that came into nearby Glen Ellen. And Jones, a retired physician who is on the development’s fire safety council, remained upset.

“To be able to see flames from my property, it’s a little concerning,” said Jones. He said that not including a Nixle alert for area residents of the planned burn, while pushing out less-immediate alerts, was “risible.”

Email Christian at christian.kallen@sonomanews.com.