Firefighters from four East Bay cities are in the Berkeley Hills this week practicing skills related to urban wildfire response. The exercises, which began Monday, come as the Sites Fire in Colusa County and others scattered across the state provide a stark reminder that wildfire season has begun amid climbing summer temperatures.
Firefighters from the Berkeley, Kensington, Albany and El Cerrito fire departments are taking part in a three-day training aimed at ensuring the four neighboring agencies are prepared for a scenario such as the 2017 Tubbs Fire that devastated Santa Rosa.
The multi-agency training will also take place on Wednesday and Friday, from 8:30 a.m. to 3 p.m. according to an online statement from Berkeley Fire. It will be held on the 500 block of Spruce Street in Berkeley, in Tilden Park and at Grizzly Peak in Kensington.
“Historically, we have a history of not really crossing lines — Berkeley will stay in Berkeley, Kensington will stay in Kensington and we all learn our areas without going into neighboring cities,” Assistant Fire Chief Levon Thaxton, who is leading drills for the Berkeley firefighters, told Berkeleyside. The training is meant to change that.
Berkeley firefighters will be discussing “structural defense” — a term that refers to the strategies firefighters use to protect buildings and the area around them from an approaching fire — and reviewing operations and locations for the East Bay Municipal Utility District’s red-and-white fire hydrants, Thaxton said.
“In the event that there was a major wildfire we would absolutely be going to Kensington, [and] Kensington will be coming into Berkeley,” Thaxton said. “We don’t want to wait for that to happen for us to familiarize ourselves with the construction, the layout of the land.”
Berkeley Hills residents should expect an increased presence of fire trucks in their neighborhoods, Thaxton said. No road closures have been planned, and no fake smoke will be used as part of the drills.
Meanwhile, Berkeley Fire’s Wildland Urban Interface (WUI) Division has been inspecting homes in Berkeley neighborhoods with high wildfire risk to ensure they are up to fire code. Beyond what the department can legally enforce, it also has a series of recommendations to further protect homes from wildfire, including creating a “zone zero,” or a 5-foot combustible-free buffer zone, around any structure.
Fire Chief David Sprague said at a May wildfire safety seminar that large wildfires occur roughly every two decades in and around Berkeley.
“Simply by evaluating the pattern of larger fires, we know that we’re overdue to experience a larger fire in the East Bay hills,” Sprague warned. The more homes in a given neighborhood have undertaken the sort of mitigation work the department recommends, he said, the harder it is for a large fire to spread into that neighborhood, giving firefighters more time to move in and possibly contain it.
Public Safety reporter Alex N. Gecan contributed to this story.
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Preparation advice, evacuation guidance and answers to your questions about air quality, power outages and defending your property.
