Although they burn miles south and east of the city of Los Altos, the Moonlight and Lick wildfires have impacted the local area, where smoggy skies and scratchy throats signaled that the smoke was carrying across a wide region.
Local representatives of the Santa Clara County Fire Department, including commissioners from the Los Altos Hills County Fire District, traveled to the Lick Fire base camp last week to study the range of resources the California Department of Forestry and Fire Prevention (Cal Fire) has assembled to fight the Lick Fire.
As of press time Monday, the Lick Fire, located in Henry Coe State Park near Morgan Hill, had covered 47,760 acres and was 95 percent contained. The Plumas County Moonlight Fire covered 62,541 acres and was only 20 percent contained.
The Bay Area Air Quality Management District issued an advisory last week warning that the two major wildfires were impacting air quality across the region. Elevated levels of particulate matter from the smoke can aggravate respiratory problems such as asthma and cause coughing, a scratchy throat and irritated sinuses.
After visiting the Lick Fire base camp, Los Altos Hills resident and fire commissioner Duffy Price reported that the camp resembled a small city, filled with tents, firefighters, a volunteer prison firefighting detail and high-tech equipment.
“The most educational aspect of our visit to the base camp was learning about the incident command and control aspects of managing the event,” Price said. “It’s phenomenal the amount of technology that comes to fight these things.”
Satellite, GPS and mobile computer systems tracked the flames. On Friday, NASA deployed a remotely piloted plane, the Ikhana. The specialized equipment on the Ikhana can penetrate the smoke to take aerial images of wildfires. It has been deployed in Oregon and Washington as well as in the Lick Fire. The plane has the technology to record hot spots, flames and temperature differences, according to NASA.
The high-tech analysis and tracking used to follow and predict the fire’s course is in contrast to the enormous physical labor of firefighters and volunteers who must clear the land around the wildfire manually.
Price noted the challenge of coordinating the amount of information necessary for the operation, including training fire responders about hazards such as the bee nests and possible marijuana gardens in the state park as well as weather forecasts, escape routes and expected fire behavior and rate of spread.
“Not only is it educational – one of the other aspects of this fire … is the tremendous effect of who gets billed,” Price said. “It’s already up to $3.3 million and it’s going to go higher. The finance end of this is probably one of the most important things that goes on.”
California taxpayers may be able to recoup some of the costs of the multiweek, interagency operation. An unidentified individual came forward last Friday claiming responsibility for starting the Lick Fire, according to Cal Fire, but as of press time had not been charged with a crime.
