Dear Members of the Menlo Park City Council - I think that each Peninsula city should consider creating an Urban Fire Suppression Reserve, which would be a group of volunteers who pay for their own background checks, fire uniforms, respirators, hoses, and public safety-compatible radios at their own expense and have one purpose only: to stay behind during an evacuation order and suppress spot fires and put water on burning structures so long as they deem it safe to do so or until ordered to withdraw.
What would it be worth to each city’s professional firefighters in the event of a Santa Cruz Mountains wildfire that crossed highway 280 if we had 1-2 such volunteers per city street to supplement the professional firefighters with a defense in depth to prevent lofted embers from igniting homes and businesses 2-3 miles behind the fire lines? Residents would be told to leave their backyard gates unlocked and garden hoses connected so that the volunteers could easily patrol each house on the street, front and back, looking for spot fires to put out. Volunteers might use drones to more efficiently monitor the houses along their street. These volunteers would go door-do-door periodically on their street to educate residents about wildfire preparedness and what to do in the event of an evacuation warning and evacuation order, also serving a useful public education function.
The tragedies of the Pacific Palisades and Altadena have made it clear that perimeter defense firefighting was defeated by lofted embers that went over the front lines and ignited structures in the urban areas.
Here is how such a force would be different from existing forces:
1) They would not be fully trained professional firefighters. They would not be trained or expected to run into burning buildings and perform rescues or serve on the front lines fighting an advancing wildfire.
2) They would not be fully trained Reserve Public Safety Officers who have to be trained to perform law enforcement as well as firefighting. They would be called out only in the event of a wildfire threatening our urban area.
3) They would not be ordinary Community Emergency Response Team members, since they would have paid to provide their own equipment and would be authorized by the city’s public safety force to remain behind during an evacuation order until ordered to withdraw or they deemed it unsafe to remain.
The only expense to each citys Public Safety of having such a volunteer force would be holding occasional one-afternoon basic training sessions that would teach the volunteers how to hook up a fire hose to a hydrant, how and when to communicate (and not communicate) over an assigned radio channel, how to patrol a street looking for spot fires, how to safely put out spot fires using garden hoses or buckets of water, and how to safely put water on a burning structure from a distance offset to the side.
These volunteers would be responsible for self-evacuating when ordered to over the radios using their own cars, so they could be easily ordered to withdraw when conditions became too dangerous without burdening public safety resources.
I understand the reluctance associated with having any civilians remain behind at all during an evacuation order, but I think that such a trained volunteer force could usefully augment the professional firefighters with a defense in depth in the event that a wildfire in the Santa Cruz Mountains jumped highway 280 and began threatening our urban area with lofted embers igniting spot fires.
Sincerely,
Eric Krock
Mobile 408-836-5230
755 Ramona Ave., Sunnyvale, CA 94087
