A hiss of steam rises in the parking lot of Henry Cowell Redwoods State Park as Jane Manning demonstrates how to safely extinguish a campfire on Saturday. She’s there with the Central Coast Prescribed Burn Association.
The Association cohosted a Good Fire Fair on Saturday with California State Parks and the University of California Cooperative Extension. The fair aimed to educate people about the benefits and risks of fire.
Central Coast Prescribed Burn Association program manager Jared Childress says local ecosystems are adapted to low-intensity fires, and indigenous people had been using controlled burning on the central coast for 15,000 plus years.
“Due to colonization and fire suppression, those burns haven't really happened in any major way for 200 years,” he said.
Childress says that suppression, plus climate change, has contributed to the intense increase in wildfires throughout the state.
The fair included a kids zone, tables from local nonprofits and fire departments, and talks and demonstrations. Fair organizers decided not to do some of the larger demonstrations due to weather.
“Our plan was to originally burn this one acre unit as a demonstration project, but due to the hot, dry, windy conditions that we're having throughout the state we backed off on that plan,” said Childress.
UC Extension forest advisor Brian Woodward agreed the weather wasn’t right for prescribed burning. But he says the burns are essential for managing wildfires.
“We want to put fire on the ground in conditions where we can keep fire to low severity and have some of those ecologically beneficial properties,” he said.
By educating people about the benefits and history of good fire, these experts hope to reduce the risks of big wildfires.