CAL FIRE BEU planning to conduct an additional controlled burn in Gablian Range

SALINAS, Calif. (KION-TV)- UPDATE ON OCTOBER 23, 2022 AT 5:26 PM- CAL FIRE BEU announced that they are planning to conduct a 500 to 1000 acre burn on private property in the Gablian Range on Monday morning depending on weather conditions.

The burn will be similar to the prescribed burn that was conducted last week. That burn was 2000 acres but also jumped out of their control line with an additional 60 acres that was burned.

Smoke will be visible from the Salinas Valley, Santa Cruz and San Benito County and Pinnacles National Park.

CAL Fire says the purpose of this burn is to reduce hazardous fire fuels by removing brush and wood debris. San Jose State University Fire Lab will also be out there conducting experiments to improve wildfire predictions and modeling of fire behavior.

CAL FIRE told KION that this will be the first time that scientists will be able to monitor a fire burning up a canyon with all their instruments inside the fire.

ORGINAL STORY

Cal-Fire burned about 2000 acres over the last two days.

But the prescribed burn went out a little farther than the agency expected. An extra 60 acres jumped out of their control line.

And according to Unit Chief George Nunez of Cal-Fire BEU, the weather didn't help.

“Last night, when the humidity came in and the burning slowed down, the activity on the slop-over and the thousand acres came to a standstill.”

Firefighters extinguish the fire, but they will keep an eye on hot spots.

One concern for locals was the air quality. However, according to Air Pollution Control Officer of the Monterey Bay Air Resources District Richard Stedman, locals shouldn't hold their breath.

“Most of the health-based standards are for 24 hours of exposure, so we didn’t see 24 hours of exposure,” Stedman said. “It maintained levels of high concentration of wood smoke.”

Cal-Fire and M.B.A.R.D work with each other before doing these burns. They want to make sure everyone is on the same page.

“When we get ready to plan these things, we’re having constant conversations with them, with NOAA, with the weather service,” Nunez said. “There’s a lot of folks that have a hand in this to make sure that what we do is meet the need, meet the mission and make sure that we’re keeping the public safe as we can.”

“It’s sort of a Yin-Yang thing,” Stedman said. “The fire department is working on fire safety issues, and we’re in there consulting on health impacts associated with air quality and wildfire smoke exposure.”