By Lori Stuenkel
Gilroy – The rain kept coming and the weeds kept growing.
In some places around Gilroy, weeds stand thick and waist high. The widespread plants that are drying in the heat of recent warm spring days offer a reminder that fire season is just around the corner, despite a forecast of rain for the weekend.
Fire officials said it is too early for any doom-and-gloom predictions about the impending fire season, but with the rainfall dwindling, they are urging property and home owners to clear away fire fuel before it becomes a hazard.
“I don’t know if fire season is going to be any worse, but we do have a healthy grass crop out there,” said Chris Morgan, fire prevention specialist with the California Department of Forestry.
Natural vegetation at higher elevations will likely dry out later in the season than usual, given the wet winter and early spring. However, plants and brush at lower elevations around Gilroy are already beginning to dry out, Morgan said. The taller the grass, the faster it will dry out.
“Because of the heavy rain, our fuel load has increased, but it may have more moisture still,” said Rodger Maggio, deputy fire marshal. “Your fire season may be severe, but it will be starting later.”
The official start of fire season is difficult to predict because it is dependent on the weather – more rain could push it further back – but Morgan expects it could come in the end of May or beginning of June. But now is the time to whack those weeds that will be brown in just weeks.
“One thing that we’re really encouraging people to do now is … get on doing clearances around their houses,” Morgan said. “We can’t emphasize that enough.”
Gilroy Fire Marshal Jackie Bretschneider said the city’s weed abatement started this week with notices to owners of vacant lots replete with weeds. Roughly 200 property owners will be reminded that weeds posing a hazard are a public nuisance.
“The weed abatement codes are really there to prevent weeds as a fire hazard or fire menace,” she said. “Our main goal is that, by the Fourth of July, we get those abated.”
The city will compile a list on May 21 of any empty lot still overgrown and, following a public announcement and hearing at a council meeting, will hire a contractor for the job. The property owner must pay for the contractor, plus a $240 administrative charge, for a total of $400 to $600, Bretschneider said. Most property owners comply with the notice, however: The city’s contractor tilled only four parcels last year.
Homeowners also must clear their property of potential fire fuel, although “big, ugly weeds don’t necessarily make a fire menace,” Bretschneider said.
Gilroy firefighters will being patrolling the city and noting houses with excessive amounts of tall, dry weeds that cover the majority of a lot. Combined with an overhang, or close to a structure, those weeds pose a danger.
“We contact (the homeowners),” Operations Chief Ed Bozzo said. “We ask them to abate it, to clear at least a 30-foot area around their homes.”
A rising threat this fire season will be in hillside areas where homes encroach nature.
“When you have homes actually co-existing with natural vegetation, you have the potential of a fire start,” Maggio said.
The city’s administrative fine policy, adopted last year, may provide home owners an added incentive to mow: A $100 fine will be imposed on violators, and can be issued more than once.
The Gilroy Fire Department is working with the CDF/South County Fire to conduct fire education both inside and outside city limits.
In the hills west of Gilroy and Morgan Hill, CDF will be inspecting homes to ensure landscaping within 30 feet is irrigated, roofs and gutters are cleaned, and dead limbs are removed. Dead and dying vegetation must not only be cleared and raked up, but hauled away to prevent fires, Morgan said.
CDF will be conducting more wildfire outreach during the second week of May, “Wildfire Awareness Week.” In a program started last year, firefighters will host “checkpoints” in certain unincorporated areas, such as those near Croy and Eastman canyons – where a destructive 2002 fire burned 3,200 acres – and hand out weed abatement and fire safety information.
CDF’s seasonal firefighters will start arriving in the area next week, Morgan said, and more stations, including locations on No Name Uno and Hecker Pass Highway, will come on-line as needed.
For more information on why weed abatement is needed or how to do it, contact Bretschneider at ja*****@**********ca.us or 846-0439.
For more information about areas outside city limits, contact the California Department of Forestry at 779-2121.
