The county Fire Department will begin prescribed burns around the Santa Ynez and Los Alamos valleys with a nearly $1 million grant from Cal Fire.
“It’s one of the most effective and cost-effective ways to reduce fuel,” Santa Barbara County Fire Marshal Fred Tan told the Sun.
First, the Santa Barbara County Fire Department will focus on implementing a prescribed burn across roughly 1,800 acres in the Sedgwick Reserve. The process is set to start in November, Tan said, but only around 280 acres will burn this year.
Sedgwick has significant effects from last year’s Lake Fire, a wildfire that burned more than 38,000 acres.
“It burned pretty intensely in and around the Sedgwick,” Tan said. “Some areas are still recovering from the [fire], so we’re not going to burn in those areas.”
After a prescribed burn, vegetation often grows back smaller, and Tan said that if another fire were to ignite, it should spread slower.
Prescribed burns are “intended to also protect the community for 10 years because we’ve reduced fuel in that area,” Tan said.
The project is made possible by a Cal Fire wildfire prevention grant through cap-and-trade funds from California Climate Investments Greenhouse Gas Reduction Fund, according to the county. With the grant, Tan said the Fire Department will pay for environmental consulting, biological and archaeological surveys, and equipment maintenance for the prescribed burn.
“It’s still fire but being able to conduct fuel reduction activities through prescribed fire at lower intensities, we can have lower greenhouse gas emissions,” Tan said.
To organize a prescribed burn, the Fire Department maps out the region, reaches landowner agreements, and completes environmental review documentation, Tan explained. When the crews get to the scene, firefighters are briefed on the fire and then they set up fire lines and containment lines, ensuring engines can maneuver through the boundaries.
“We’ll also have the crews and construction with their heavy equipment also create contingency lines so that if a fire maybe escapes a little bit, … we can hold it at a contingency line,” Tan said. “There’s sometimes miles of lines that have to get placed.”
An entire project typically lasts between two to seven days, he added.
In addition to burning at the Sedgwick Reserve, Tan said the department plans to finalize landowner agreements next year to burn around 1,100 acres for the Ballard Vegetation Management Plan.
The grant will be used for smaller vegetation management projects like roadside mowing, too.
In California, fire is a reality, Tan said.
“I think we’d all rather have that fire happen on our terms, though,” Tan said, “when we’re prepared and we have crews there and ready to reduce fuel on our terms.”
This article appears in Oct 16 – Oct 23, 2025.