At 8:24 pm Thursday, a call went out for a report of a warming fire on the side of E. Camino Cielo, approximately 3 miles up from Painted Cave Rd. Two members of the MET went to investigate in the patrol truck and were joined by two patrols from San Marcos Pass VFD. Thankfully, the campers seemed to have extinguished their fire and moved on, as nothing was found all they way out toward La Cumbre Peak. This did provide an excellent opportunity for a real time exercise and collaboration with our neighbors. Unfortunately, this also exemplifies and ongoing and increasing problem with camping on ECC. A huge thank you to San Marcos Pass and the WRA. It's good to know that we can have three patrol trucks up and about in fairly short notice.
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Awesome - Thank you, Gordon!
Related to this post, yesterday I wrote the following letter to SB County Fire Chief Mark Hartwig. Thanks Everyone!
At today's Santa Barbara Firesafe Council meeting, I asked Fire Marshall Rob Hazard about the possibility of stationing an engine at the Forest Service Fire Station on top of San Marcos Pass, especially during dangerous weather/fire conditions. I was happy to hear about the possibility of a permanent station on top of the Pass in the distant future to enable faster responses to threats along Camino Cielo and the general San Marcos Pass area. However, that does not solve immediate needs to protect our mountain neighborhoods and potentially stop a fire from racing down the mountain, as occurred with the recent Cave Fire in November 2019.
Please consider the logic of temporarily stationing an engine at the San Marcos Fire Station, especially during times of Red Flag alerts. With increased human activity along Camino Cielo, including more homeless campers and large gatherings of party goers (driven in part by the Internet), it would be very prudent to have an engine just minutes away.
I would be happy to meet with appropriate County personnel and participate in any way to give support to this public safety proposal.
Sincerely yours,
Gordon Sichi
San Marcos Trout Club
805 895 4004
It was a really good real life exercise, Randy and I saw things that need to be done for night time operations for the rig (can anyone say fundraiser?), and it really showed us the need to get our communications up and running.
There was nothing that would have seriously impacted us if we had come upon a fire, but there are things we need to tighten up.
I also echo Jessica's thank you to SMPVFD and the WRA!!!!!