Reserve Steward Feynner Arias and I have worked on the Kirk Complex wild fire nearly every day since the fires began in early September. Early on we worked at Whale Point on fire clearance and evacuation of irreplaceable items, with the help of friends and volunteers. Later, as the fire slowly approached, we worked mostly with firefighters. We have met and worked with literally hundreds of professional firefighters, giving them orientation, advice, and help. We have met a lot of great people, and nearly all are ready to put themselves on the line to help out our property and our community. Controlling fire in this country is extremely challenging, and requires skill, coordination, and dedication. I observed and experienced a number of challenging difficulties and exciting new developments in dealing with fires.

Many of the firefighters are not from our area, and many have great difficulty working in this landscape. The combination of extremely steep slopes and thick brush is very intimidating, and I saw many crews decide that they could not safely traverse the terrain off-trail. As a result most fire fighting activity is concentrated on roads and ridge tops, with some work on hand lines down the steep slopes. Air support was crucial in dealing with hotspots and smokes on the slopes. Bulldozer lines were used to quickly create firebreaks, but hand lines were used more often, apparently with equal effectiveness.

The firefighters have extremely poor maps. The base maps are out of date, showing roads where they existed 50 years ago. Modern roads are omitted, and the poor quality of the photocopy compounds the problem of finding yourself on the ground. However, the maps usually have up-to-date information on the location of the fire front, so if you can figure out where you are on the map, you can also figure the location of the fire. I spent a great deal of time giving orientation and advice about the terrain, as well as giving out copies of our reserve map whenever appropriate. (I am grateful to American Blueprint in Pacific Grove for reproducing our map at no charge for this purpose.)

Nearly all the firefighters were eager for information, and listened attentively to what we had to say. They were also were very responsive to our need to treat the reserve as a wilderness. For example, they planned to make a bulldozer line up Highlands Ridge through the reserve, using the non-existent ridgetop jeep trail shown on their maps. After talking with their planning team it became apparent that there was no need to use bulldozers. I also worked out a compromise for Dolan Ridge, in which they were to use only the corner of the blade to create a fire line, and not to use the blade at all on steep slopes. This was, in the words of the bulldozer strike team captain "to save the tired crews from having to dig the lines by hand."

Except for one time when Mike Boone called to warn me that crews were about to start work in the reserve, I was never called for consultation (or even warned) about major activities taking place in the reserve. This failure led to many avoidable mistakes. Crews cleared over a mile of road by hand within the reserve, only to abandon the line after they realized it was indefensible and in the wrong place. The hand line down Devil's Canyon was put in 1-200 meters west of its optimal location. A later team, unaware of the situation and the earlier agreements, ignored the established bulldozer strategy for Dolan Ridge. I didn't get to them in time, and they cut a wide, deep track up Dolan Ridge through the reserve grasslands and up steep slopes, causing damage which will take years and a lot of hard work to correct. The same crew had tried and failed to gain access up to Rust Point from the reserve, and did not realize they could gain access to this section from the Santa Lucia road. I had worked out this access with the owner to the west several days previously, but word of this never made it to the people on the ground. Similarly, the landowner of the Rust Point property was never contacted until the fire was over. A timely phone call (or better yet, a recognized working relationship) could have prevented these problems, and probably many others.

As the fire front descended from Highlands Camp toward the Stewart cabin, a team went up and sprayed "barricade" gel on the cabin. A couple of days later they applied the gel to the private owners' cabins at Devil's Creek Flat. The gel is something like transparent Elmer's glue, and seems to stick to any surface. It needs to be rehydrated by sprinkling water on it, but lasts for many days. When the fire came through a few days later the Stewart cabin survived. The Devil's Creek Flat cabins also survived when the fire descended from the north. The gel was washed off the cabins a couple of weeks later with no visible effect on the wood. These new techniques for fire fighting open up a practical, low-cost avenue for dealing with wildfires: save structures individually and let the brush burn.

The latest statistics I have for the fire is 85,000 acres burned, and $57 million spent on fire suppression. No structures burned in our area, at least. The nature of the fire, the season of the year, and the prevailing weather conditions conspired to make this a cool, slow burning fire. Relatively few structures are found in the region of the fire, and the vast majority of these were on the lower coastal slope where fires burn slowly. The Kirk fire was a situation where a "let burn" policy could have worked well while saving tens of millions of dollars. I have been told by the firefighters that this was not an option because we have no fire management plan in place for the region.

We probably should put together such a plan. Based on these and other observations, I have some ideas to incorporate in the plan. First, make our local captains a central part of the fire command structure, and give them the means to develop working relationships with landowners and other local experts. Second, produce better maps, update them with better information, and get cleaner copies to the crews on the ground. Third, adopt a "let-burn" policy whenever feasible, and concentrate on structure protection. Fourth, investigate new ways to enhance structure protection services and make new technologies available. I envision teams of small, highly mobile trucks combining evacuation procedures with structure protection teams and technology. In this way the land can rejuvenate and recycle on its own without human intervention, and we can save a lot of taxpayer dollars at the same time.