Controlled burn planned for Monday on San Mateo County coast

A column of smoke will be seen Monday for miles across parts of the Bay Area. But it’s not an emergency.

CalFire crews have scheduled a controlled burn Monday along the San Mateo County coast near Pescadero as a way to reduce fire risk while conditions are favorable. The 45-acre fire will be at TomKat Ranch, the location of a similar 49-acre controlled burn that CalFire crews completed last month.

The 1,800-acre ranch, owned since 2002 by financier and former Democratic presidential candidate Tom Steyer and his wife, philanthropist Kat Taylor, has been the site of numerous other controlled burns in recent years. The goal is to reduce fire risk in the community and regenerate fire-tolerant plant species, such as native grasslands.

“We work to create a patchwork of burned areas that are burned under our control,” said Cecile Juliette, a CalFire spokeswoman. “We feel like it’s better to do that and help our firefighters and reduce the amount of vegetation that can burn. Dealing with one day of smoke is less dangerous than a major wildfire that burns cars and houses and buildings.”

The fire is expected to burn coyote brush, grasses, poison oak and other vegetation. Juliette said there will be several engines, numerous firefighters, and likely a CalFire helicopter there for safety.

In August 2020, San Mateo and Santa Cruz counties were the site of the CZU Lightning Fire, which was started during a dry lightning storm. The historic blaze burned for 5 weeks, charring 86,509 acres, killing one man and destroying 1,490 structures, mostly homes around the town of Boulder Creek and Big Basin Redwoods State Park.

In recent years, as wildfire risk has worsened, fire agencies across the state have worked to increase mechanical thinning and controlled burns in landscapes that naturally burned regularly but which have seen decades of fire suppression, building up unnaturally high levels of brush and trees.

CalFire has completed prescribed fires along the Central Coast in recent months at Wilder Ranch State Park in Santa Cruz County and Pomponio Ranch in San Gregorio, among other locations, along with other places in the Bay Area, such as Calero County Park in October in Santa Clara County.

Weather conditions must be just right, Juliette said: dry enough so that flames will ignite and thin vegetation, but not so dry or windy that the fire is at risk of exploding out of control. Such burns also require approval of state air quality regulators.

“It’s a balancing act,” she said. “The weather conditions are constantly assessed.”