We apologize for not getting a Newsletter out last week, but poor Mary was one of the evacuees from Healdsburg and without a home, and no power, we just decided to skip a week. We are grateful that homes and entire towns were saved, and happy no lives were lost in this latest fire disaster.

Our thank yous go out to all our Member firms who once again allowed their employees to go out and be “Cowboys” with their water trucks and help first responders up in Geyserville, Mayacama, Arata Lane in Windsor, and in the Healdsburg area. We heard some of the water trucks may have helped prevent the Kincade fire from jumping Highway 101 and those water trucks were much appreciated by the heroic first responders that got on fire fighting early and saved Healdsburg and Windsor from being destroyed.

One of our members, Ghilotti Construction, hosted the National Guard at their overflow yard on Todd Road and I got a request from Dale Mahoney to find hot meals for 380 Guardsmen on Wednesday. After making a few calls and a Facebook post, I learned about and connected with Heather Irwin, of the Sonoma Family Meal Center located in Petaluma. Heather said her kitchen could accommodate that many meals and I put her in contact with Dale Mahoney and the Guardsmen got fed! As a thank you, Mary and I decided to include the link here so if anybody wants to donate directly to Heather’s charity, you can do so by clicking this link

I also want to give a special shout-out to Jenah Smith for donating hundreds of sandwiches and chips to the Guardsmen on Friday last week. Thanks to Broadway Market for giving her a discount. Thanks Jenah!!!

Shoutout to Clint St. Martin and his wonderful donater Katrina who cooked pasta for over 100 meals and delivered the food to Todd Road on Thursday.

Finally, big shoutout to Jeremy Soiland who had his company Rock Crushing Solutions donated $500 to defray expenses to the Guardsmen.

Supervisor Lynda Hopkins spoke at the Alliance Breakfast Meeting Wednesday, 11-6-19 and appealed for help in getting our County back to economic recovery after the fires and the power outages cost small businesses a lot of money. Specifically, Lynda and her assistant Ariel, spoke about the hundreds of people in line for assistance in Healdsburg because they had lost work, and rent was due, and they lost food, etc. etc. and they have zero “bandwidth” to accommodate those losses. The County and their partners have raised over $300,000 for assistance to these folks, but they need over $500,000. These people include service workers, farm workers, and other hourly workers who must survive, pay rent, and get back to work. If you want to help, here is the local donation link to assist

Before we go to the Soapbox, I also wanted to provide an update on “What’s next” for cleaning up the fire debris, erosion control, etc. for the Kincade Fire.

I have spoken to Johannes Hoevertsz at the County of Sonoma, and there apparently will not be any Cal OES, FEMA, or Army Corps coming in to cleanup after the Kincade Fire. Yes, the County will try to seek reimbursement from State and Fed sources for some of the cleanup costs to them and to homeowners, but nothing like what we saw in 2017.

The County is in their 11^th or 12^th day of working to cut down dead and burnt trees and get them ready to haul to their yard in Windsor for temp storage. County can use some trucking help.

Apparently, the assessment of the Kincade burn area surprisingly poses no emergency risk to erosion runoff so the massive effort we saw in 2017 will not be necessary. The County is actively negotiating with hydroseeders and some major hydroseeding will shortly take place.

The County is negotiating with hazardous companies to do the initial site assessment (as EPA did in 2017) for gas cans, paint cans, etc. Once that is done, homeowners can apply to have their property cleaned up using similar toxic guidelines as were used in 2017 but the guidelines will be based on individual properties, not regional levels as before. There will be opportunity for our local firms that specialize in this sort of soil testing work.

And there will be guardrail and fencing cleanup, some structure cleanup, and the process for that will be similar/identical to what transpired for private cleanup in 2017 (without the Right of Entry stuff for Army Corps cleanup work).

This is a dynamic situation and Johannes will update us as things are finalized.

We have set up a 40 hour hazwop class to be held on the following dates: December 3,4,10,11 from 8 am– 6 pm . If you are interested, or have employees you would like to send (and we think this time all boots on the ground will have to have this certification!), please sign up today! flyer

What has caused the worst fires in California in the last dozen years? Contrary to what you might believe, it is not just PG&E’s power lines malfunctioning or arcing in high winds. The causes have been arson, weed mowing causing sparks, faulty outdoor wiring to power a hot tub, a target shooter’s rifle bullet causing a spark, grinding on a metal pipe causing sparks, lightning, illegal campfires, fireworks, and a blown tire on a trailer dragging over pavement causing sparks.

A good article to read on what was the cause of the 10 worst wildfires (at the time), which admittedly does not have the last several fires included in it, is the SF Chronicle article from October of 2017 that you can read by clicking on this link.

Native Californians that I know, and I am one of them, do not recall such a huge number of wildfires as we have seen in the last 12 years. Yes, we would see occasional wildfires in Southern California fanned and spread by the infamous Santa Ana winds, and occasionally some fires in Lake County over the decades, but not the “every year” occurrence that we have recently seen.

So why the burning prevalence now?

Governor Newsom would have you believe that it is all PG&E’s fault for neglecting maintenance on their distribution lines. President Trump would have you believe it is all the State of California’s forest mismanagement.

Although lengthy-the this link from CAL Matters is the best analytic I have read on the reasons for these fires throughout California since 2007.

John’s Soapbox

Where’s the Truth?

My humble opinion is the cause is drought, people building more houses in areas that have high fire danger, the bark beetle ravaging our National and State forest land, and a failure of the State and Feds to thin their forests and cleanup fuel that lies on the ground.

Oh-and there is the matter of PG & E malfunctioning equipment and power lines arcing in high winds.

Although I am biased because I wrote and spoke against the huge fine the PUC levied against PG&E in 2015, I want to lay some of the blame on the PUC. When the San Bruno explosion tragedy happened, it was obvious that PG & E had some real safety problems with their gas distribution lines. Yes, PG & E should have dealt with those safety concerns earlier, but when the PUC was considering the $1.4 billion fine they ultimately assessed, the appeal was made to the PUC to force the ENTIRE FINE to go to safety upgrades and facility maintenance-not just for gas lines, but for power distribution lines as well.

The PUC detailed that $850 million would go to improving PG & E’s gas transmission lines, $300 million to the State Treasury, $400 million to be rebated to PG&E’s customers/ratepayers, and $50 million to PUC safety concerns/activities that are not known to me or the public.

I am not saying that PG & E should not have been penalized I am saying the PUC should have forced maintenance work and safety upgrades by where the dollars were spent.

Now we all know that PG & E did not cause all the wildfires in the past dozen years. There is very little we can do about lightning strikes, dumbasses who mow high weeds with equipment that has no spark arrestors, and “a not so bright person” that put in non-code wiring to power their hot tub in Lake County. Short of the government taking over and really screwing up PG & E (because we know they would screw it up), what can we do to eliminate the wildfires that were caused by PG & E?

I keep hearing the “easy” fix would be to bury the overhead lines in high fire areas. Supervisor David Rabbitt and State Senator Bill Dodd have discussed burying those lines and the rough estimate would be about $1 Trillion to do so.

Whoops.

The next easiest fix was to force PG & E and other power providers to cut power on high risk weather situations. We all know that could help, but what a costly and major and in some cases, dangerous fix. Regardless, that is the State’s mandate to PG & E to let them out of some major litigation following the 2017 fires. PG & E has no choice in that matter.

After a casual discussion with Mr. Ken Dern of Aaction Rents, I have my suggested, somewhat plagiarized planned fix for mitigating fires caused by overhead wires arcing in high winds and a few ideas for the other wildfire causes in the last dozen years:

1. Get that $300 million back from the State of California and immediately use inmates, homeless, youth, and guide them with skilled workers and clear 50 yards from all overhead transmission lines in high fire danger areas.
2. Install weed barriers and rock under those overhead transmission lines in high fire danger areas so there is no fuel under them
3. Continue the costly and invasive power shutdowns on high fire danger days and provide tax incentives for folks to buy and properly install generators for their businesses and homes. Make sure we inspect to ensure the installation is to code and does not create more fire danger problems.
4. Invasive or not, we need to quickly trim trees and brush away from other overhead power lines in high risk neighborhoods (Proctor Heights, Montecito Heights, Mark West areas are good examples of these areas).
5. Provide tax incentives to larger landowners for clearing larger fire breaks on their lands. Vineyards have proven to be a good way to slow the wildfires, but in many areas that won’t sustain vineyards, we could do a lot more to cut 100-yard fire breaks at property boundaries. After speaking to a few landowners, they would be willing to do those big fire breaks if their tax savings could help pay their costs.
6. Hope it rains more.
7. Stop talking about taking over PG & E.
8. Put much higher penalties on dumbasses that mow and target shoot and do fireworks and burn campfires in high fire danger areas.

Thanks, Ken Dern, for the inspiration!!

John Bly

That’s All Folks!