Sacramento Region is a Tinderbox Ready to Explode

The Sacramento region is a tinderbox waiting to explode, and fire prevention officials are warning that it won’t take much to ignite an inferno.

The Labor Day weekend was the last hurrah for many on summer vacation. But for local firefighters, the next few weeks will be some of the most critical in a fire season that has already started too early and burned too hot.

“We’ve been really lucky so far,” Capt. Jim Doucette,spokesman for the Sacramento Fire Department, said last week.

For many local fire-prevention experts, the question is not whether the Sacramento region will have a catastrophic fire, the question is when,” Doucette said.

Tossed cigarettes, backyard barbecues and unattended campfires are some of the main concerns cited by local officials.

They also warn that well-meaning residents trying to clear their land could be surprised by a single spark from a lawn mower blade striking a rock.

Officials in the Eldorado National Forest – one of Sacramento’s outdoor playgrounds – term the fire danger in their area critically high. Strict controls on any type of fire outside hosted campgrounds have been in place since June, but many visitors are ignoring those rules, officials said.

Dangerous conditions extend all the way down into urban areas, said Assistant Chief Greg Mugartegui, with the Sacramento Metropolitan Fire District.

State officials measure the moisture in vegetation to provide local firefighters with a burn index and those measurements are “off the chart,” Murgartegui said.

“In June and July, we were seeing conditions that were as dry as they usually are in September and October,” Doucette said.

He recently returned from visiting relatives in Boise, Idaho, where a wind-driven fire devastated a neighborhood Aug. 25.

“I started driving around, taking a look at the many neighborhoods that we have in Sacramento that are just like that neighborhood in Boise,” Doucette said.

The common elements include older homes with wood siding and shake roofs surrounded by wooden fences and dry, brushy fields, Doucette said.

Mugartegui said Metro Fire regularly deals with wildland fires along the American River Parkway.

“On the north side of the American River there are a lot homes at the top of the bluffs and a fire could race right up those hills,” Mugartegui said.

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