Last July, as I sat in the audience during the Auburn City Council’s study session on fire prevention activities in the American River Canyon, I experienced one of those jolting moments in life. No, it wasn’t the circa- 1977 burnt orange and mud brown decor of the council chambers that sent shivers up my spine. Rather, the shock came - I sat up strait and opened my mouth in horror – as I listened to a representative of the federal Bureau of Reclamation (BOR), which owns 26,000 acres in the canyon and the dam site, tell city council members that the bureau did not have a fire prevention plan.

The fact that the BOR has owned the canyon lands for decades and had done absolutely nothing to reduce the threat of catastrophic wildfire to the residents of our town seemed to me a clear case of governmental malpractice. I think, upon hearing this startling testimony, that my mouth opened so wide that a butterfly, a hummingbird, and one of those freakishly large moths that we get in the summer months could have nestled in next to a few cavities and made a nice little home. Thank goodness the city council doesn’t hold outdoor meetings.

But over the last ten months we have made some progress on the fire prevention problem. We have a new fire chief with extensive experience in wildfire prevention. Residents have formed a Greater Auburn Fire Safe Council and obtained a $25,000 grant to an independent consultant to produce a comprehensive fire prevention plan for our town due this summer. The Placer Alliance, made up of representatives of other fire councils in the county and various firefighting agencies, was recently created and is pursuing grants to enhance our countywide capability to prevent and fight wildfires. These are all positive and important steps.

Some of the best news on the fire prevention front came during a study session of the Auburn City Council last month, on April 1st. And it was no April Fools joke. Like the television character Gomer Pyle, I felt like exclaiming in a southern accent, “surprise, surprise!” as I cheerfully listened to representatives from BOR and the California Department of Forestry (CDF) describe a proposed Auburn Area Shaded Fuel Break Plan. A shaded fuel break is created when all the wood brush is removed and the remaining trees are thinned and separated by about 15 feet to ensure, in the case of a wildfire, that fire retardant dropped by CDF aircraft hits the ground and effectively puts out the fire rather than getting stuck in the canopy to no purpose. Of course, a shaded fuel break looks much better than a clear-cut swath and is better environmentally. Demonstration sites that show what a shaded fuel break looks like are located off Maidu Road and Thurza Court.

The BOR/CDF fire prevention plan would consist of a 300 foot-wide shaded fuel break all along the ridge of the American River Canyon meandering for 11 miles from Sherman Trek to the Foresthill Bridge. In the potential shaded fuel break area, about 50-65% of the land is privately owned while the remaining lands are owned by public agencies.

You may be thinking that this is too good to be true. There must be a catch. After all, we are talking about the government. Well, you’re right. The catch in this proposed public-private partnership is that if private landowners do not prepare their portion of the 300 foot-wide shaded fuel break, CDF won’t do anything on the corresponding public lands. If private landowners don’t do their part in solving this public policy problem, this potentially great chain of protection for the residents of Auburn will be weakened and fatally marred by missing links. And if a wildfire breaks out in the canyon it will quickly find its way to those areas on the ridge that have years of fuel buildup – the missing links - and the safety of men, women, and children of our town will be threatened.

Essentially, the BOR and CDF have thrown the ball back into our town’s court. If we drop the ball now, we will have blown a golden opportunity. If the city doesn’t get every landowner that lives along the canyon ridge involved in creating and maintaining a shaded fuel break, we will fail. If the city doesn’t re-write our antiquated weed abatement ordinance to reflect the realities of living next to a canyon full of dead wood, we will fail. If our town doesn’t apply for federal grants to help private landowners create shaded fuel breaks in our community, we will fail. Oregon has recently received $7.2 million in federal grants from the National Fire Plan and is using this money to give private landowners living in communities with the highest wildfire danger $300 grants to make their homes safe from wildfire. There is no reason why we can’t do the same.

Gene Kranz, the longtime NASA Flight Director, knew that the lives of the Apollo astronauts were often in his hands and those of his colleagues in Mission Control. He took the responsibilities of his job seriously. His motto was “failure is not an option.” We can learn from Kranz’s perseverance and his “zero-error” policy. Our city leaders need to take ownership of the shaded fuel break plan, run with it, and make it a success. If this occurs, we will have taken an historic step forward in ensuring the safety of our great town. The significance of this brief window of opportunity should not be underestimated.

Copyright 2002 The Auburn Sentinel