Santa Clara County park rangers gear up for wildfire season with prescribed burns
Santa Clara County park rangers are working hard to clear brush and conduct pile burns. It's all part of their vegetation management and wildfire prevention, helping to save our parks from monster wildfires.
For Brian Christensen, protecting Sanborn County Park is personal. That's because this park was once his home.
"The Redwoods are probably my favorite community out here," Christensen said. "I actually lived in Sanborn Park as a resident ranger for five years. My kids grew up here."
Christensen is a Park Ranger Supervisor and Wildland Firefighter for Santa Clara County Parks and Recreation. He's leading a mission at Sanborn County Park, conducting controlled pile burns to reduce the risk of devastating wildfires.
"If you take the fuels away from a fire, it's like not having fuel for your campfire," Christensen said. "If you don't have the logs to put on your campfire to make it big, well then you don't have anything to burn, so if we burn those light flashy fuels on the ground like some of those intermediate fuels like the limbs that are here, it takes that away so you have no continuity of fire throughout the environment that is out here."
As crews ignited the first burn pile, Christensen kept a close eye on conditions to make sure it was safe to continue.
"The fine fuels are way too dry," Christensen said.
This day, Christensen did not like what he saw.
"We almost had a fully engulfed pile within seven minutes," Christensen said. "We ultimately have to say, 'No' and move on."
Vegetation had dried up too quickly in our recent warm and dry weather, making it burn faster than expected. Because of that, Christensen and his crew decided to stop the project for the day.
"When we did light the fire on the ground, it's kind of our test to see how the fuels are going to react," Christensen said. "I did see things I did not like. We did get a lot of ember casting. We got a lot of ground creep around the piles, even though we did have handlines scratched around it, so ultimately, I called off the whole operation. It hurts your pride, but ultimately, it's the safety of the community, the safety of the folks and the safety of the environment, so I had to make the call to say, 'No.'"
It's Christensen's passion to protect our beautiful parks. He said his team will conduct controlled burns again, but only when conditions are right and safe.
All Santa Clara County park rangers are also wildland firefighters. They partner with Cal Fire in all of their controlled burn projects.
Their next scheduled prescribed burn is in June.