Annual Meeting December 13

Post date: Dec 1, 2017 10:12:58 PM

Our December annual meeting will feature guest speaker Jake Hess, CAL FIRE Deputy Chief Operations, San Mateo-Santa Cruz Unit. Deputy Chief Hess and Battalion Chief Aldo Gonzalez were the Incident Commanders for the October 16-27 Bear Fire outside Boulder Creek.  His presentation will be on Bear Fire Lessons Learned. Chief Hess tells us:

… [H]ere some of the items that will inevitably come up at the talk:

This fire was terrain and fuel driven with little to no wind. This fire had significant potential and we ordered our additional resources accordingly. We entered into unified Command with the Santa Cruz County Sheriff’s department and issued evacuation orders. This fire had potential need to order a Type I incident command team, however we did not as we were able to handle the fires operationally and utilized a Marin County Type III team for Logistical support. The County EOC was activated and staffed with multiple agencies throughout the entire incident. Access and egress were an issue for responders as well as tight narrow unimproved roads and driveways. The air assets that we ordered played a significant role in the success of this incident due to inaccessible terrain. There were multiple injuries on this fire as well as an injury to a fire fighter classified as “significant”. Shelters were opened and identified for civilians in Santa Cruz and Santa Clara counties.

Please join us Wednesday evening, December 13, 7-8:30pm at the Bonny Doon Elementary School Multipurpose Room.