Mountain Fire Break Advocates Resurrect Plan To Clear Mountain Ridges, Add Big Sprinklers
Written by 991KBU on February 4, 2019
A committee of Santa Monica Mountain residents is reactivating its decade old call to build a fire defense system of sorts above Malibu.
The coalition for fire safety communities believes that the old firebreaks on the Ridge Tops above Malibu could be a defense for wildfires.
Don Schmitz …. A Malibu real estate developer … first propose the idea 15 years ago.
The coalition for fire safety communities … which he heads … we’ll have a community meeting later this month to describe the system.
Schmitz describes that the system the KB UU news as
NEWSCART 03502 SCHMITZ SPRINKLERS QQQ TO THE SEA, UNSTOPPABLE.
“… a system of what we call wet defensible fire breaks.
“It’s really very basic: get the wet stuff on the red stuff.
“So we know where you can stop the fires, and where you can channel the fires on the geographic ridgelines that for all the fires from the north to south into Malibu, and unincorporated Malibu.
REPORTER: “So you’re talking about a system of reactivating the fire breaks, and some new ones to create a barrier?”
SCHMITZ: “Yeah but the difference is, in addition to the traditional firebreaks, where you simply clear the brush along the top of the ridgelines, we are proposing a system where upon you have waterlines, these is not the type of water mains that serve houses and businesses, these are just waterlines like you would have an agricultural area with large agricultural sprinklers on them, fed by large storage tanks.
And what this would do his would allow the government to put a tremendous amount of water on his key ridgelines, to stop these conflagrations from marching straight to the sea, unstoppable.”
That’s Don Schmitz of the coalition for fire safety communities.
That group made a push for reactivating the fire breaks and putting waterlines on them after major fires hit Malibu in the mid 1990s.
15 years ago … some firefighters questioned the plan … and said it would not work any major firestorm.
The coalition for fire safety communities of a public meeting to present its plan later this month.
We will keep you posted.
