From the December 2011 Battle Mountain News

Post date: Jul 3, 2014 8:31:29 PM

Burn Season

Time to tarp your burn piles! Backyard burn season starts December 1. Remember that, to satisfy air quality regulations, the slash that you burn must be dry: material less than 2” in diameter must dry for 30 days, 2''-6'' for 60 days, and over 6” for 6 months.

CAL FIRE regulates the common sense aspects of backyard burning: don't burn on a windy day at the end of a long winter dry spell, keep your fires small and attended, with water readily at hand.

The actual determination of whether burning is allowed on a specific day is made by the Monterey Bay Unified Air Pollution Control District (MBUAPCD). Please call 1-800-CAL-BURN (1-800-225-2876) after 4pm to find out if the following day will be a burn day. Start early and check your burns after dark to be sure that they are extinguished. The MBUAPCD only has one weather station, and our mountain, next to the sea and upwind of their station and downwind from the prevailing winter winds is at some remove. Even if it is a no burn day in the Monterey Bay area at large, if there is a good (> 1500') mixing layer here and over the San Lorenzo Valley, so we don't end up with smoke trapped where we and our neighbors are breathing, you can call Betsy Hibbits, MBUAPCD Smoke Management Coordinator, at (831) 647-9411 ext. 213 on the (week)day you want to burn and discuss the possibility of burning here nonetheless.

Defensible Space Maintenance

If you've traversed Martin Road this summer of fall, you've noticed that Ben Lomond Camp crews have been maintaining the shaded fuel break that they constructed in 2007-2008, and that gave the firefighters time to fight, and ultimately contain, the Martin Fire that summer.

Since then there has been a lot of wind throw from the shading and dead trees in the area and the brush beneath has grown back into ladder fuels. The defensible space around your home and along your street is no different. Now is a good time to pick up fallen branches, cut back brush and thin less vigorous trees in favor of more vigorous ones.