Permit Burn

In the Morongo Valley a citizen can get a permit to burn off some of their vegetation. In order to be able to do this they have to have 30 feet of clearance in every direction from the fire. They also must have a garden hose so that they can put the fire out. There are also restriction as to the size of the fire. The day of the actual burn they have to call the county to see if it is a "burn day" and they have to call their local fire station and let them know that there is going to be a permitted burn going on. That way when someone freaks out and calls the station or 911 we don't get toned out.

On Friday morning a citizen just to blocks down the street from us did all this. I talked to him at 0700 and made sure that he had done everything he needed to do. I then let my engineer know what was going on. About 30 minutes later we received a knock at the door. A woman had seen smoke and stopped to let us know of the fire. We assured her that we knew and that it was a permitted burn. About 5 minutes later the phone rang. Our comm center (dispatch) was informing us that they had received multiple calls on the permit burn and that one caller said that there were flames visible from across the highway above the roof tops. This got our attention. We quickly suited up and started in that direction. As soon as we had cleared the station we could see a huge header (column of smoke). Upon our arrival we discovered that the citizen with the burn permit had done everything but follow the directions about the size of the fire. The fire was about 15-20 feet across and 4 feet tall in some sections. Eric asked the man if was able to put out the fire with his garden hose. The man assured him that he could and then, when he tried, found out that there was no way to put the fire out with a garden hose. Mongo and I were then instructed to grab the 1 3/4 inch cross lay and put the fire out. We promptly covered the entire pile with water and foam. It took about 30 minutes to get all the little hot spots out. We had to call a CalFire engine 3586 to come down and take a report. The State fire inspectors will now have to come out and see if they are going to reissue a burn permit. The poor guys now has a large soaking wet pile of brush that is partially burned that he may not be able to burn any further. At least we got there before it got too far out of control.