< All Press Releases

EL DORADO HILLS, Calif. – A review of fire behavior has concluded the Bureau of Land Management's fuels management program helped firefighters contain a fire that threatened homes in Cameron Park.

The BLM Mother Lode Field Office attributes the small size of the Aug. 15 Park Wildfire off Meder Road to the quick response of CAL FIRE and a fuels management program that established a 100-foot-wide fuel break two years ago.

The fire burned in the tranquil 4,790-acre Pine Hills Preserve. Hundreds of homes encircle this preserve to be close to nature. When natural areas become overgrown, a purging wildfire is natural and inevitable. The fire was human caused and exact cause is under investigation.

"Understanding the wildfire risk, the Mother Lode Field Office established a rotating fuels management program over a decade ago to improve ecosystem health and reduce the wildfire risk to the Cameron Park community," said Bill Haigh, Mother Lode field manager.

"The Park Wildfire was the fourth wildfire on BLM-managed public land this summer," said Jerry Martinez, BLM zone fire management officer. "Three out of the four wildfires tested our fuelbreaks. Firefighters reported that in the unmanaged land, fire intensity escalated due to continuous vegetation (fuels) with above-average heights. Once the wildfire reached the fuel break, fire activity slowed due to the lower fuel height and sporadic combustible fuels. With the height and depth of the fuel reduced, firefighters were able to easily access the Park Wildfire and quickly extinguish the heat source."

For example, a 10-foot-tall unmanaged chaparral can produce flame lengths 15-20 feet tall. Firefighters reported flame lengths dropped to three-to-five-feet-tall once the fire reached the fuel break with two-foot-tall chaparral.

Fifty-six acres have been treated inside the 454-acre Cameron Park Unit on a two-to-three year rotation, with 4.2 miles of fuel breaks around the perimeter of BLM land that borders private property (up to 100 feet wide). Fuels management includes a combination of hand clearing and mechanical chipping of highly flammable vegetation (fuels) in addition to piling the dead vegetation and burning it on site. 

One of the challenges facing land management agencies is maintaining the effectiveness of fuel breaks, Martinez said. "We have to keep cutting brush just like you mow your lawn," he said.  In just a few years, the brush can grow back to the point the fuel break is ineffective, so the BLM must regularly cut brush on existing fuel breaks.

"The Bureau of Land Management would like to share its success story as a lesson to all residents that live near nature," Haigh said. A 100-foot minimum fuel break provides space for fighters to suppress an encroaching fire and make heat convection less likely to ignite a house or fence.

Find out what the experts know about the best way to make your home and neighborhood safer from wildfire. The Bureau of Land Management can provide you wildfire tips from the basics of defensible space and sound landscaping techniques to research on how homes ignite.

The Pine Hills Preserve is a cooperative conservation effort among local entities to protect the habitat of eight rare plant species. The preserve lands and the adjacent Kanaka Valley, located approximately 30 miles east of Sacramento, includes 4,790 acres, about 70 percent of which has a dense cluster of rare plants and is within an area designated for the recovery of five federally listed rare plants. 

Visit BLM California on Facebook to see fuels management photos. For more information, contact the Mother Lode Field Office at (916) 941-3101.