Fire Watch Volunteers

 Dear Neighbors

 

As I mentioned at our road meeting that most of you attended, we have been working to get  one of the Vollmer wildfire cameras pointed at Wildcat Canyon during Diablo wind events.  We have gotten agreement from the camera owners to aim one of the cameras down Wildcat Canyon as the default position.  Of course this is only the first step.  The second essential step is to make sure eyes are constantly watching the camera during a red flag event with NE (northeast) winds.  Surveillance needs to be constant as fire experts have told me that a fire that ignites in the Canyon during a NE Diablo wind event could move to our ridgeline in as short as 15 min.  It is very unlikely officials will provide this level of surveillance as they have too few resources and tend to think about using the cameras for guiding their response, not for initial fire recognition.  In the long term, folks are trying to develop Image-recognition technology to identify fire automatically but that is a ways off. 

 

The risk of a wildfire in Wildcat Canyon is very real.  Historically, major fires have occurred every 10-20 years over the past 100 yr with one of them making it all the way to downtown Berkeley.  There have also been some arson-triggered events according to our local historian, Bob Shaner.  The most concerning occurred in the 1970’s when an arsonist drove down the Wildcat Canyon fire road and threw out road flares.  More recently, people have been starting bonfires and setting off fireworks on Grizzly Peak road (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BCQvE_73l2g).  Eight fires have been set by these folks in the past week. 

 

With these facts in mind, I am organizing a 24-hr neighborhood watch of the camera on Vollmer during NE Diablo wind events.  The idea would be to get at least 24 volunteers with each doing a 1-hr watch from their home computer for the duration of the NE Diablo wind event (typically 1-2 days).  A “watch” like this could give us valuable minutes to evacuate if a fire is triggered in the Canyon. 

 

If you are willing to volunteer please let me know.  I’ll be putting together a protocol to guide observers as to what to look out for and how to respond should they spot something.   This will be vetted with local fire officials. 

 

Cortis Cooper

Kensington, CA