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Burn Permits Now Required in Humboldt, Trinity, and Mendocino Counties as Drier Season Begins · KMUD News

• 0:01
  Speaker A: Burn permits are now required in Humboldt, Trinity and Mendocino counties and across much of California. As May 1 marks the beginning of a drier, warmer period. Cal Fire's Shane Lampkin, a battalion chief with the Mendocino unit, shared more on why permits are necessary and how they help prevent catastrophic fire in our region.
• 0:27
  Speaker B: Yeah, we're just now getting into fire season. Cal Fire is going to require a burn permit for any burning that's going on in the sra. The SRA is the state responsibility area. So if you reside within the state responsibility area, you will need to acquire a burn permit to help with the fuel reduction process on your property.
• 0:54
  Speaker A: While Cal Fire no longer uses the term fire season, since wildfires can now happen year round, May 1 still marks the traditional start. That's why burn permits are now required as of today.
• 1:11
  Speaker B: It's that in between time where everything's still kind of green. It's transitioning to drier fuels, and we want to make sure that everybody's doing it safe. It's a very educational point portion of fire season because we do encourage the fuels reduction to continue to happen, though. We don't want anything to escape anybody's control. So there's a lot of education that goes along with this. And going through the burn permit process, you obtain a lot of knowledge and, and coaching that goes along with the burning the fuel reduction season.
• 1:49
  Speaker A: Applying for a burn permit takes less than five minutes and helps prevent wildfires by enforcing safety rules tied to weather and fire danger. It notifies fire agencies so they aren't dispatched unnecessarily to control the burns and helps landowners avoid fines or liability from unauthorized or out of control fires.
• 2:16
  Speaker B: If you go through the steps on the burn permit process, you're going to have all the tools you need to successfully complete burn projects on your property. You just want to make sure that you're paying attention to the weather. You're making sure you're paying attention to air quality control restrictions because they, they ultimately have the say of whether you can burn or not. And then when burn season is over, that is declared by the unit chief and there'll be a time where we're not going to allow burning on the property whether you have a permit or not, because the extreme hazard that it could possess of a fire growing out of control.
• 3:03
  Speaker A: A complete burn ban is expected within the next two months, depending on vegetation, moisture and how many fires Cal Fire has responded to.
• 3:14
  Speaker B: I want to encourage everybody to burn and get it done as early as possible, but weather is going to dictate that and then with weather dictating that it'll be the call of the unit chief. And in years past it's been somewhere between June 1 and July 1, but it's very weather dependent and and we don't want to put our the citizens of Mendocino county in a bad situation by allowing them to continue to burn when conditions don't warrant for it.
• 3:47
  Speaker A: In closing, we asked if there's any models or forecast predictions on how severe this year's fire season may be.
• 3:56
  Speaker B: I would always expect to be on the more cautious side of things. We do have a significant grass growth this year which has the capability to carry fires into the more extreme areas, the steeper topography, the thicker fuel such as the brush and the timber. So just be cognizant of the grass that we have out there. That's the most receptive fuel that we have in the county. And if that starts and it can carry there's there's always a potential for large growth.
• 4:34
  Speaker A: For helpful tips and more information on burn permits, you can visit fire.ca.gov.