New Cal Fire video touts fuel reduction for limited damage in Sonoma County Point Fire

New video released Tuesday by Cal Fire recalls the explosive nature of the June Point Fire, which erupted June 16 near Lake Sonoma and spread within 10 hours to more than 1,000 acres along the West Side of the Dry Creek Valley.

But it ultimately focuses on the successful work done months and years ago to reduce fire risks and how those efforts limited the damage that wildfires might otherwise have caused.

It is, as the subtitle says, a “story about fuel processing efficiency” that comes with a warning to viewers to make sure their own homes and neighborhoods are ” ready for the fire.

“Often the number of structures exceeds the number of firefighters responding,” Cal Fire Battalion Chief Marshall Turbeville says in the video, “so having defensible space and vegetation management is very critical around buildings and structures.”

However, three houses and seven outbuildings were destroyed. But “if there had not been defensible space during the Point Fire, it is highly likely that more structures and residences (sic) would have burned,” Turbeville said.

The 1,207-acre Point Fire, the cause of which is still under investigation, started on the Stewarts Point-Skaggs Spring Road side. He quickly escaped the firefighters, as embers blew into the brush and trees downwind. Wind blowing through a canyon pushed the fire southeast until it became established on the north side of Bradford Mountain.

At this point, firefighters called for a massive response, allowing individual crews to protect structures in the area. That task was made significantly easier by residents cleaning up around their homes, driveways and private roads, allowing firefighters to enter safely and take position, Turbeville said.

Additionally, roadside fuel reduction work conducted under a 2018 Cal Fire grant by the Northern Sonoma County Fire Protection District, as well as the creation of a firebreak shaded along Mountain View Ranch Road and other areas off West Dry Creek Road, reduced flammable undergrowth, soil. litter and lower branches of trees.

When residents around Mountain View Ranch Road requested prescribed burns in their neighborhood in fall 2020, fire crews burned several 10- to 15-acre plots between the vegetation management area and a bulldozer line on along Bradford Mountain — cut off during fire suppression efforts in the 2020 Walbridge Fire, Turbeville said.

“So a grant in 2018 from Cal Fire, Sonoma County, provided funding for prescribed burning, landowners doing their part for structural flammability and defensible space, all led to a positive outcome and less destructive from the occasional fire of 2024.”

You can reach editor Mary Callahan (she/her) at 707-521-5249 or [email protected]. On X (Twitter) @MaryCallahanB.