By Mary O’KEEFE

Assemblymember Laura Friedman held a virtual town hall meeting focusing on wildfires in the area. The assembled panel spoke about the most recent wildfires at that time, the Bobcat and El Dorado fires, which are now nearly contained. The information shared is important to review as fire season continues in California.

Afif El-Hasan is a doctor who specializes in asthma; he is also the spokesperson for the American Lung Association. He monitored air quality during the worst of the Bobcat and El Dorado wildfires.
“These fires [took] a significant toll on people’s health,” he said. “The smoke doesn’t just stay outside houses and people are having issues breathing along with other issues. Unfortunately it is coming at a time when we are dealing with COVID [19], which is something we have never had to deal with before.”

The pandemic has affected firefighters as well.

“With CAL FIRE it has been quite challenging with COVID [19] now in the equation; you can imagine [what it’s like] when we have large-scale fires,” said panel guest Chief Dan Johnson, CAL FIRE, Southern Region.

Fighting wildfires involves numerous firefighters, law enforcement personnel, volunteers and support personnel who are in camps set up at the incident command post; however, pandemic guidelines have added an extra layer of planning when building these camps.

“Imagine feeding 4,000 firefighters at one incident. What we can normally do with six tents [due to] social distancing it takes 12 to 20 tents to provide meals,” Johnson said.

In addition, food has to be put into individual boxes, not served buffet-style as it usually is, and equipment has to be housed separately. Each agency acts as a family unit, keeping together in their own modules. Special cleaning and infection control and monitoring guidelines are also in place.

“It has been a huge challenge,” he said.

However, the fire agencies had gone over precautionary procedures months prior to the recent fires.

“There have been challenges with the [pandemic], but we have known for several years what the fire situation would be and we very closely monitor the weather and the fuels conditions,” Johnson said, “which means the brush all the way to the timber. We’ve had a really big hit to the forest with more than 30 million dead trees. Due to the droughts a tree gets distressed and bugs will take over. The trees don’t recover so now we are sitting on the backside of that.”

“A lot of us had been watching the smoke coming over the hills from the Angeles National Forest,” Friedman said. She asked what local residents could do to lower their fire risk.

“Home hardening is first and foremost,” Johnson said, “to complete defensive work around the homestead.”

Cleaning gutters, removing flammable material away from structures and clearing brush are a few other things that can be done. It was also pointed out when clearing brush to be cautious when using metal equipment, like lawnmowers, which can actually start fires if metal blades hit rocks and create sparks.

Panel guest Jay Lopez, recently retired Los Angeles County Fire assistant chief and board member for the California Fire Safe Council, and Johnson suggested residents be proactive and prepare for the possibility of evacuation through the Ready! Set! Go! program approved by fire departments.

Though fires can be miles away poor air quality can still affect residents. El-Hasan said that many have been worried about air quality, especially in regard to children and those with chronic lung issues like asthma. He added that even after a fire is cleared and the air quality is at a better level there is still ash on structures that can be blown back into the air.
“During this latest Bobcat Fire we saw many days when we had unhealthy, hazardous, even sometimes very hazardous, levels of air pollution. It is not just a matter of people with asthma or heart disease [being at risk]; it is really everybody who is being affected by these very high levels of pollution,” said panel guest Dr. Jo Kay Ghosh, director of Community Air Programs/Health Effects officer, So. Coast Air Quality Management District. She added that although everyone should be wearing a mask due to the pandemic the best way for people to protect themselves from poor air quality is to stay inside with the windows closed.

El-Hasan reminded people who have compromised lung capacity to make sure to have enough medication in case an evacuation order is issued. He did not suggest to stockpile medication but to make sure people have enough for whatever chronic disease they have.

“The worst time to realize you’re having an asthma attack is when you realize the inhaler is out,” he said.