In this episode, we’re taking a deeper look at the complicated relationship between fire and our forests right here in the Truckee area. JD HOSS is joined by Kevin Mecham from the U.S. Forest Service to break down why fire—which we often think of as strictly a threat—is actually a natural and necessary part of a healthy forest ecosystem.

When we look out our window, we see the Sierras as a playground, a backdrop for our lives in Truckee.

Underneath the towering pines, a clock is ticking.

For over a century, we've tried to control wildfire.

We fought it, suppressed it, and chased it out of the woods, putting it out as fast as possible.

But what if that approach is part of the problem?

Here's the hard truth.

Fire is not the enemy.

But in places like Truckee, it's becoming something far more dangerous than it ever was meant to be.

Today, we're talking about why fire belongs in our forest and what happens when we don't let it do its job.

Welcome to 101.5 Community Conversations on Wildfire, where we help you stay safe, informed, and ready.

I'm your host, JD Haas, and this episode is called Living with Fire.

Understanding Truckee's Fire Ecology and Forest Health.

Today we're going deep into the ecology of our home.

We're joined by Kevin Meeko with the U.S. forest Service, who works directly in the forest and fire management here in Truckee to discuss why fire belongs here, the danger of its absence, and why doing nothing is the most dangerous choice we can make.

Kevin, thanks for being here and let the listeners know a little bit about who you are.

2008.

The bulk of that has been as a hotshot, specifically the Tahoe Hotshots, which are out of Camptonville, California, and Trike Hotshots, which are here in Hobart Mills.

But I've worked on engines.

I've worked on a helicopter.

But Hotshots was what resonated with me the most.

Now I'm in fuels, which is prescribed fire vegetation management and fire suppression still.

So then I would qualify you as a fire specialist.

Yeah, I think fire specialists fit well with that.

Let's jump into it.

So, Kevin, when you look around here in the forest today in Truckee, what do you see compared to what these forests were like historically?

Great question.

And the first thing that came to mind is challenge.

We're long since deviated from our natural fire return intervals, which just means we've excluded fire for a long time.

And that's created a lot of challenges.

Our woods used to be a lot more open, had more stand age diversity.

Those are the primary differences.

But a lot of it is positive.

I feel optimism.

The work that Truckee Fire is doing locally is impactful.

And will be impactful.

And the work that we're doing is also like if you look at our projects, Big Jack east, helping secure Sierra Meadows, the Alder 89 timber sale and the fields projects in there are going to do a lot for tall Donner in 89 north, Cabin Creek to 89 south.

You know, it's focused in the right areas, so we are long since deviated.

But we're moving in the right direction and we're doing it from our community centers out, which I think took a while to get people behind and we're there now.

So I think think collectively we're moving in the right direction.

Yeah, I was just out riding around on those mountain bike trails in the Big Jack where you did all that work.

It's so much different, so much different.

So is up on Jackass Ridge where you're doing that work off 89.

And I think folks who've been around a while, they can see the difference.

But one thing has really changed in the community when we say the word fire.

It's always related to a word, catastrophe.

Why did fire belong in this ecosystem?

And what role did fire naturally play in shaping the forest before modern suppression?

Huge.

I want to start with catastrophe.

Yeah, let's go there.

I think the public honestly hasn't had a fair shake at developing their own perception on wildfire or fire as a whole.

And you know, it shaped me immensely.

But I've got experiences, you know, the average person, public, non firefighter wouldn't have.

And I think what a lot of media we've sold.

Fire is big scary to the public and fire is big scary.

And you can, you can think about the fire scars already around us.

Go back as far as you want, but you know, Donner comes to mind.

Martis Mill Bear, Royal Dixie Caldor.

As you know, these mega fires, Palisades eaten, you know, they are.

They're big scary and they're a whole nother beast.

And I think the public hasn't had the opportunity to engage with fire on a level on their own terms.

Like we're long since removed from people that were, you know, doing prescribed fire on their own land or even, you know, not many people burning piles in Truckee anymore.

So I think that can kind of be extrapolated across our society.

And people just have less connection with the natural world in some ways.

And specifically when it's on fire and they're left to the images that are sellable, what they see in the media.

And you should be scared of fire.

I've struggled with this in my current role with prescribed fire and how to, how to pitch it.

And it's, it is a challenge because I want people to be.

Scared isn't the right word, but I want them to like to take it seriously.

And that's kind of one of the things that pulls people in is like, well, well this is a threat.

But at the same time I need people to understand that it can be something entirely different.

It can be very mellow.

And the role that it played historically was nature's landscaper.

It was what maintained our woods that we used to have.

So the woods were a lot more open, there was more large fire resistant trees and that was done by low severity fire.

Occasionally there'd be ice severity pocket, you know, like lightning strike in July and it finally dries out and it's on a south facing aspect.

It catches more salt and burns up and it nukes out one little spot.

But it was just that versus now we kind of have fuel stacked at a level that, you know, that's what we get over and over now.

But the woods were, they were open, they were thinner.

And I think people have kind of normalized our woods now.

You know, we talked about Big Jack east and the trails on the 06 road and I think there was a lot of friction initially with that project and people like, oh, this isn't what the wood should look like.

And I think people need to.

Not a gut check, not a reality check, but a lot of what we've normalized is what the woods should look like.

It's so in my mind I envision people in those times, back in that time being able to ride a horse at full speed through the forest.

I laugh at that.

Is that wrong?

That's a John Muir quote.

I had it in my head and I almost went there and I held it in.

But yeah, that is kind of the baseline that historically is there.

And there's some pretty cool books out that have some photo plots that have been recreated that show it and it is significant.

You know, like you see the growth, the buildup, we're, we're in a different place because of it and, and we need to rein it in as best we can.

So back in that time, now that we're all there riding our horses through the forest in our head.

I am my new horse.

My mountain bike is right through all these places.

Trails are right through all the work you've done.

How often would fire move through these areas back in the day?

And what, what did those fires typically look like?

Fire return intervals in The Sierra Nev.

Were generally there's different numbers, but seven to 10 years is a pretty safe, safe number to log into your head.

And I think for people trying to process the, the impact of that, you know, like you think about the exclusion of fire, you know, over 100 years.

I mean it's a wild, a wild amount of accumulation and growth.

But those fires, they were, they were benign, they were low intensity, you know, a lot of them backing fires.

So, so it, backing fires when fire is moving, you know, convection pulsings uphill.

Right.

As fire backs down a slope, it can, it can really just clean up things.

We, we generally need initial entry first because we're so deviated from natural fire return intervals that any introduction of fire will result in moderate to high severity effects.

But in a perfect world, or if we go back to our horses, you know, that fire would be backing down the hillside and you just walk through it, you know, you would have just cruised by like, oh, there's some fire and kept on going.

It wasn't this big, ominous, scary.

It truly, you know, it manicured our woods.

Yeah, it did, it did, it did.

And now when I'm riding around through the forest on my modern day horse and looking at the work you've done, it seems like that's the kind of fire that we're gonna get.

It's gonna be low, intense.

You guys have done so much work cleaning it out and then having the thrasher come in and take everything so low.

Man, it makes me stoked to hear that.

And I think under the right conditions it will be not to be the, the boy who cries wolf, but under the right conditions, you know, like we're hot, we're dry, we're in a, you know, low tide snowpack year.

There's still that potential.

So, you know, you get it in the 98th percentile fire weather.

You know, like there's, there's still threat in a lot of areas and fire can move through those quickly.

So, so I don't want people to, to drop their guard or to forget we're not close.

Yeah, to forget that.

You know, like the maintenance that needs to come up with those and that' big topic for a lot of the neighborhoods that are around big Jackies.

But, but it is, it's impactful.

It's hugely impactful.

Are we going to backburn those?

Yeah, it, it's.

Once those are done, do they then they get managed by being back burned again?

That's the hope.

And that's, that's a broader conversation about fire Suppression resources and timing that.

But yeah, that, that is the, that's the.

Okay, suppression trap.

This is a new term for me that leads us right to it.

We become so good at putting fires out that accidentally created a landscape where when a fire does get away from us, it's no longer a natural process.

It's the monster that we're talking about.

And so my question is, the Forest Service has spent decades putting fires out as quickly as possible.

What were the intentions behind that approach?

They're pretty simple really.

That came from the big fires.

It was almost 3 million acres that burnt in Montana, in Idaho, killed 86 people.

Really laid the framework for modern fire suppression or fire management policy.

And the intent was obviously good.

Big, big wildfire was, was destructive, it killed people, it, it obliterated infrastructure.

And that obviously looked very different now than what it is, but it still removed towns and then it wiped out the resources that they were, they were building and extracting all those natural resources with.

Or that was the natural resource, it was the timber.

So, so the intent was obviously good, but this, this who thing, I mean it's, it's, it's really unbelievable and it's, it's honestly terrifying.

It's predictable, but it's terrifying nonetheless.

And where we're, where we're going with it is, is, is, is an interesting place that I wish we could catch up on, on faster.

And my mind's running a little bit and thinking back to the John Muir and those examples of, of the contrast between those, you know, I was on the most, the most impactful experience I had on a wildfire that kind of, you know, illust.

I was on a fire.

So Northern California and big fire, fire everywhere.

And the chunk of ground we had, the fire was hung up on the ridge.

So you know, Hot Chuck Creek.

You get in there and you try and figure out what you're going to do with it, which involves a lot of walking and scouting.

So I'm up there walking fire's edge.

So this is uncontrolled.

Thousands of acres of fire just burning freely at will.

And there was fire back and down this hillside and it was the most peaceful looking thing you imagine, you know, like six inch flame links.

Six inch flame links are like.

It was very benign.

And then I walked up and so it was doing nothing but good.

And even if you don't have the fire ecology or, you know, you can think of it about like raking the needles around your house.

It was just cleaning everything up.

Perfect.

And then I walked up and I walked up on three enormous bucks bedded down, not a care in the world.

And it all kind of clicked at one time.

It's like, oh, this is it, you know, like I've seen, I've seen wildlife do some crazy things in fire, you know, like run.

Run straight into 40 foot walls of, you know, instant death.

And seeing these bucks bedded down with fire, creeping right next to them was kind of this like, aha.

Type of moment where like, that's what it's supposed to be, that's what it's supposed to look like.

And here's, you know, nature, wildlife engaging with it how it's supposed to be.

It's not this panic stricken, fear based thing.

It's natural, it's what it's supposed to be.

It's clean up the woods.

And it stuck with me as kind of that like, there it is.

You know, it really just cemented imagery for all of what I already kn, but it gave me like the vision and it's like, all right, this is cool.

Wildlife tells the story.

You have hit a spot with me that is just so deep to home.

You know, I've known this deer herd here for my whole life.

The other side of the border in Nevada.

194, 196.

That's how they're known.

They're known here as X7A and X7B.

And I followed these deer and when you said you were watching that fire, just 6 inch flames, and they were sitting there and they weren't concerned at all.

You took me back to a place about a decade ago when they were built, building Martis camp and Schaefer's mill, and I call it the last deer herd.

And I was driving down brockway to 267 and before I got the Martis camp to make that right turn, it was a very deep snowfall and there was this buck with 9 to 11 does and they were running down Brockway road, leaving.

I have never seen a herd of deer here again.

They are so intuitive.

They knew Kevin, they knew what we were doing and they knew what was going on with the landscape.

You hit on something so special and so that I think that those who are listening out there, please, if this is your area of expertise, watch the wildlife.

The wildlife can tell you what's going on around you and that makes a lot of change.

And now we're rolling into something that we should all be thinking about.

Consequences for communities like Truckee with fire.

So, Kevin, what does this specifically mean for communities like Truckee that are surrounded by forests?

Be engaged.

I will.

You know, I want nothing more from the community than for folks to understand the wildfire threat.

I think that's the core of it.

Community that has evaluated the wildfire risk and subsequent impacts and chosen to be proactive and not reactive.

This is kind of a deeper, darker imagery, probably, but, you know, having.

Having walked a lot of.

Of communities that, you know, are wiped off the map or homes that are.

And you see the.

The, you know, whatever town you want to fill in the blank, you know, like, Truckee strong.

Truckee strong.

You know, like, I want to be Truckee strong before it's black now.

I want to be trucking strong now.

Okay.

And I think that, like, if.

If you've ever, you know, driven any of our major interstates during fire season or you've been traveling on a road trip and been through those areas, I mean, you've probably, you know, seen the.

Afterwards, I want a sticker.

I want a shirt.

I don't see a banner, you know, like, afterwards, like, we need to do that now.

And I think that what that means for you kind of depends on where you sit in this community and what you envision as your sphere of influence.

But that's what I want through all.

These conversations and everybody I talk to, this is the most direct piece of information that I have received, and it's coming straight from the fire lines, straight from somebody who's been in communities that have been wiped out completely by wildfire.

It's Truckee strong now.

I think that's a line I struggle to walk frequently.

You know, I think I can be viewed as pretty, you know, pessimistic or, like, doomsday, but it's also like, I'm calibrated differently.

I've walked a lot of that ground, you know, and I've seen the impacts.

I've seen.

Seen.

I've seen the families coming back to their homes or, you know, what were their.

Their dreams, their pets, their livestock, their livelihoods, you name it.

And.

And it's rough, and it has an impact on you.

And.

And I don't.

You know, I moved here for a reason, and.

And I wanted.

I want.

I want our woods to exist.

You know, it's where we all recreate it's.

It's, it's what drives a lot of this town.

So I think yeah, engage whatever that means with for you.

You know, if that's rake your pine needles, if that's, you know, write a letter to an elected official, you know, you, you do you, you make your impact.

But I think I'd like to see it now versus retroactive going back to these fires.

They're hotter, they're more intense, they affect many things beyond homes like water, soil and long term forest recovery.

Tell the listeners about that.

It's devastating.

I mean there's a lot of language that comes out of wildland fire that produces pretty good imagery but like moonscape is one of them when you walk.

High severity fire, that's kind of what it looks like.

It's black instead of a wider color depending on I guess the ash in places it can get white.

But like that's what it looks like.

I mean it's, it's the moon.

There's, there's nothing left.

And that's, I mean unbelievably devastating.

Tree regeneration, soil erosion, water quality, it's, it's a long list.

There's stand replacing fires and the aftermath is shattering.

As we get warmer and drier.

A lot of these fire scars are also, also type converting and that's, that's a hard one for me to, to watch and accept you know as a lot of the you know, timbered landscapes and, and you know the far reaches of Northern California even really a lot of the Sierra, you know as those large fires come come back in or those large fires come through, we're, we're type converting like they're turning into brush, field brush filled snag patches and I think we can even look pretty close to home.

You know it's depressing.

There's, that is a, those are rough areas.

A lot of it doesn't look good.

And the thought of losing our timber and you know that kind of Southern California fuel type creeping further and further up into the north state.

You know like I like timber.

I don't like recreating.

And she tells me about the fire she came from this little place out in the middle of Nevada where everything was so pristine and so perfect and all of a sudden this catastrophic fire, and that might be the, I don't know the name of it, might be the Donner fire.

So every time you drive on that freeway on 80, I do.

And I look at that as I'm coming back home from Reno and I look up above Gold Ranch, past that new development, and I look up at that hillside and there's not a tree.

One, one, none.

Tahoe Donner was basically logged, most of it at Boca Hill at Prosser.

It, it just, it skirted around the reservoirs.

But I think about what that landscape would be.

It's huge.

They didn't have the fire suppression, which we'll get into what you guys are doing, but no go.

Tell me what you think.

Well, a ton of thoughts came in there.

There, there's a, there's a video about that.

There's real old school, black and white.

I'll dig it up and I'll send it to you if I can find it.

But I think, I think anybody living in that illusion, you know, like, like we're in fire country, like, there's no doubt about it.

And you spoke to one of the iconic fire scars around here that a lot of people probably don't know or remember.

I mean, if you stop it, Stampede Reservoir, and you go across the dam, they're shot up and kind of falling apart.

But those signs are still there.

They kind of break down that fire footprint and how quick it moved.

And some timelines, there's the same, there's a few spots, signage that has it for the Cottonwood.

But you know, and you can, you know, locally between the Loyalton Bear Mill, the Royal up on the summit, you know, like we've had them.

And then you go bigger, the, you know, Martis Cottonwood and then, you know, Caldor Dixie.

Like, I mean that was a, that was a impactful, devastating period.

Looking out the window and seeing the Dixie to our north and turning around the other way and oh my God, the Caldor to the south, you know, like it's coming and I think people need to process that.

And if you look kind of at a, at a regional scale, you know, every west, east aligned major drainage in the Sierra Nevada has had large fire run through It.

So we've got, got, you know, we're sitting at, you know, at the top of, of of the Yuba.

We've got some of the American.

American.

Like we've, you know, we're, we're a lot of firemen, fire ecologists, a lot of folks.

We are that green island that, that a lot of people think has the bullseye on it.

That's, that's next.

And I don't have any interest, like I'm not fear mongering with it like that.

That's real, that, that's reality.

Like Truckee's strong now.

Okay, Kevin?

Yeah, affirmative.

I mean Truckee's strong.

I like that.

Aff you guys.

All the state I've heard.

I mean, I remember I was almost right when I saw both plumes when I saw Dixie and I saw Caldor.

I was almost on that same exact road at Brockway looking in both directions where I saw that herd of deer leave a decade ago.

Yeah, 15 years ago, that, that spot.

And I was like, oh my God, that blew my.

This is bad.

Yeah.

And people like, they didn't understand what was going on.

Some people were just like, oh, that's a million miles away.

It was not a million miles away.

I think that that's a huge, a huge point.

And people need to process the realities in there.

And then also like, yeah, when you see those smoke columns that are going that big, the energy release in there, you know, like the relation to fire, you know, like a campfire, kids around it with s' mores versus that is like.

It's like atomic bomb.

You know, the amount of energy being released.

Like you look at the.

We'll call it, you know, it's pyrocumulus when it's like that big from wildfire.

But like, man, that's like mushroom cloud.

I mean it really is that much energy.

And I mean it's hard to put into words like what that looks like or feels like, you know, I mean it's a pretty wild experience to be.

And we get desensitized to it.

You know, when you're looking at 100 foot flame lengths, when you've got mature timber ripping off, it's even taller.

You know, like a 200 foot flame.

Sounds like that's like Hollywood, man.

Or you're, you're out there like, no, that's real and it's, it's another world, you know.

And yeah, like I'm grateful I don't.

Have to carry that little yellow bag around and go back out to the fires.

To the front line to bring the stories like I did back on my first fire in the Angora.

Because technology's here, it's happening, but there's so many more things in technology.

Let's turn this another direction and start rolling this back because, man, I, I've been down these roads and I'm sure the listeners are like, okay, I, I got it.

Let's talk about what the forest service is doing and what tools the forest service is doing, service is using now to try to restore balance in these forests.

Honestly, all of them, I think we're moving as fast as our capacity, environmental compliance and funding will allow.

And I'm thankful locally that we've got timber staff that we're doing it from our communities outward.

So, so what that broad answer looks like is we're logging, we're masticating.

Prescribed fire is a challenged thing with fire suppression resources.

But we're trying, we're burning.

And that obviously the science that's behind all of that, and a lot of that is data driven models of where we need to be.

And a lot of it is also what we know.

So we're kind of using everything that's available to us.

And I think capacity, funding and environmental compliance is where we're.

Those are the hurdles.

Let's walk through what a prescribed burn actually looks like from planning the execution because they're scary for people who don't know what's going on.

Yeah, I'll try and shorten this up.

But in general, prescribed fire, like I've said, most of our woods need an initial treatment.

Like we can't introduce fire into them in their current state without having undesirable fire effects.

So there's initial entry.

We can keep rolling with The Big Jack East 06 Road Sawtooth Trails as our example area that, you know, you need the first treatment to come in.

So once that's in, then you start working on the prescribed fire plan, which involves fire modeling.

So you get your fuel inputs and you derive from that fire modeling the effects that you want.

So what desired flame lengths are going to be to meet the resource objectives that you're trying to get.

So what level of fuels you want consumed, you want big logs to stay, little logs to go, you want it all to go.

So you're doing the fire modeling for inside your units, and you're also doing the fire modeling for outside the units in the event that there was an escape like that all needs to be modeled also.

And all of that also drives your specific weather parameters which have to be met for the burn plan.

So those are determined.

And then also the suppression resources that come out of the fire modeling.

So you need, you know, the fire modeling will produce the rates of spread, and then you got to take that into chains per hour, which is how fast firefighters can work.

A chain is 66ft.

And then it'll tell you how, you know, you, you determine how many of what type of resources you need to meet those thresholds to deal with the fire that you may have.

And then you monitor.

Well, and then you build a smoke management plan.

And then so there's coordination with air quality management district.

And then, and then you're, you're monitoring conditions and you're, you're hoping for that window, for conditions to align.

And then you've got, got the fireside, the firefighter resources, and that's pretty critical.

Tell me if this is in the plan, Kevin, While you're doing the prescribed burns, you're talking about fire resources.

Do you have that?

It's a DC10.

Is that what it is?

What is that plan?

Is that DC10 on hold for us at any time during that?

No, no, it's not.

But prescribed fire, you know, I think if we had the right resources, we could do some in season, like during fire season burning.

But right as it stands now, the capacity doesn't really exist.

So prescribed fire is in our shoulder seasons.

When those resource availability is ripe, we have access to them, or else we don't engage in a project like that.

Yeah, it sounds, that's probably the biggest challenge of doing more of that work.

And then jumping through tape.

Yeah, the tapes actually on the prescribed fireframe, pretty manageable and supportable.

It's fire suppression resources, you know, so our firefighters are our fire practitioners, you know, and personally, as, as a, in the prescribed fire world, as a burn boss, what gives me the confidence to engage with a project is the quality and caliber, the competence, operational savvy of my, of my resources, you know, and, and all.

Yeah, the.

So it's a huge deal.

So here on the Tahoe, we're a federal resource.

So if we've spring, if the Southwest has a busy fire season, they kick off before us, they're burning before they get their monsoons.

If Arizona or New Mexico are cranking, we'll lose.

We'll send a lot of resources out there and we have less resources.

Same can happen in the fall.

If the Santa Anas are cranking in SoCal, we can be stripped and there goes the burn window.

So there's a lot of challenge with Prescribed fire, that, that it just requires a lot of fire, fire resources for me personally to want to engage as a burn boss.

We've been talking about short season to do these prescribed burns and it's all about climate.

You know, how narrow is that window for actually get in there and do the work?

It has to be done before the next red flag warning or does it get done between?

How's that all work?

Yeah, so there's very specific weather parameters and you can generally kind of only meet them in the shoulder seasons.

You know, once we're pushing indices that have us, you know, in even moderate fire behavior, definitely high fire danger days like that's all out, we're out of prescription.

We couldn't burn if we wanted to.

So the window's tiny.

It's tiny and it feels like it's getting smaller.

And you couple that with this competition for resources challenge.

We've got response responsibilities nationally.

And as you kick resources out, it just exacerbates that tiny window of are the stars gonna align and can we do it in the same or not the same.

But for our mechanical treatments, our logging operations and vegetation management, that's not prescribed fire like mastication, that also has specific weather thresholds and there's project activity levels.

And when we start getting into the higher end of indices and fire season, they also have shutdown criteria.

Whether either they have to shut down by 1 o' clock or some days they can't operate at all.

Which is a double edged sword.

Right.

We don't want things in the woods happening that could start fires.

You know, you think about a bulldozer that's big metal grousers rubbing over rocks, or a masticator is a giant spinning metal head with teeth on it smashing into rocks, creating sparks.

But at the same time it's a challenge because when we stop that work, it's not getting done.

So it, there's, there's some finesse that's a challenge in there.

But there really, really finesse was a poor word.

There's specific parameters and if they're over them, things don't happen.

All right, we're running down into the final minutes here.

Very quickly for those who are just tuning in that have not been listening, if every resident there's public concern around smoke or controlled burns.

How do you weigh these short term impacts against long term risk?

It's everything we've been talking about.

Hit this one shortly one more time.

For those who are just tuning in, I get it.

No one likes breathing smoke.

I hate it.

And we Smoked out Russell Valley hard last year trying to get a project done.

And I feel for him and I hate breathing smoke.

So like I'm right there with everybody.

But choose your disturbance.

You know, logging equipment, 4am an unabated wildfire or some prescribed fire smoke, you know, there's limited tools we have available.

And then when you, you think about like non merchantable material like if, if timber won't pay its way out of its woods, if it won't pay its way out of the woods, we got to do something else with it and it's very expensive.

And then also prescribed fire addresses all that duff needle accumulation that nothing else does.

Nothing else.

There ain't no, there's, there is no rake in the forest.

Like someone has to like, like burning.

That's the only way that that gets removed.

And that as we go back to our ladder fuels discussion, you know, like that is the base of the ladder.

It's also the receptive fuel bed for you know, embers.

You know, be it someone's chains dragon or the cigarette out the window or the kids with fireworks.

Like so prescribed fire is the really the only thing that addresses that.

And I know I was supposed to make it quick, but as a fireman the only.

Nothing's been quick.

But we got great answers.

Kevin.

The like there isn't a better fuel treatment, you know, or mitigation process than prescribed fire.

That as a fireman I would prefer to walk into than recent prescribed fire.

It's black or it's, there's little of everything like you know, so that's where you, you can make a stand or you can ingress egress for public or a place to catch initial attack.

Like it's, it's the foothold for, for, for everything that's pretty hard to beat.

Timber won't pay its way out of the woods.

That's a good one.

Some will, A lot will.

Some will.

Let's leave that right there.

The community's role.

Let's talk about community because that's why we live here.

So if Truckee residents feel overwhelmed by the scale of the forest, what is the one thing they should understand about their role in the wildland urban interface?

The forest was here before you.

It will hopefully be here long after.

So nobody's a local.

Yeah, there you go.

Nobody's a local.

Nobody's a local.

That is, that is going to be my new answer.

Yeah, go ahead.

I didn't mean to interrupt you, but you just answered the biggest question in Truckee.

Who's a local?

Yeah, the forest.

But really, I mean, I mean it.

Learn to love it.

Engage with it.

Be pragmatic.

Be engaged, and leverage your voice.

Okay, from your perspective, what's the biggest misconception Truckee residents have about wildfire?

Easy.

It won't happen to me or it won't happen here.

And I think we.

We smashed that one pretty hard with.

With the wildfire around us like that.

That's a real threat.

But don't.

Don't let that fear paralyze you.

Do something with it.

One thing.

Do something.

Cause it's overwhelming, I think, about everything I have to do.

Yeah.

So let's talk about one thing.

If every resident today took one action, just one this year, to reduce wildfire risk, what would you want that to be?

Understand that wildfire is coming.

I think the easy answer of, you know, your defensible space.

Rake your needles.

Enormously impactful.

But I would rather leave it with.

With, you know, understand that wildfire is common.

And.

And I think that leaves it open for more people to do more with.

And.

And honestly, if.

If you're not part of the solution, you're part of the problem.

And I mean that positively, you know, like, do something.

And if that's your pine needles, great.

If that's your getting involved with your community.

Wildfire.

Wildfire, Fire wise community, neighborhood protection, stuff like, that's great.

If you want to take it further, send it.

Just send it.

I'm going to ask that you don't have an illegal campfire.

Personally.

That's my personal thing that I see out there riding my bike around through the forest.

I see it all the time.

If you do have a campfire, if a legal one, this is a hard one for people to understand, but it's not just pouring the water on and it's stirring it.

You have to have the courage to stick your hand in the fire to the bottom and make sure that it's dead out.

Because I've been on fires where all of a sudden, a week later, the wind comes up.

That part on the top that was watered, and all of a sudden those coals are off again and burning.

Yeah, that takes courage, too.

I mean, so if you really want to have a campfire, you've got to be willing to stick your hand to the bottom of the fire.

That's a big action.

Yeah, that's a big action.

Yeah.

You know, so be prepared.

Be prepared.

Have a shovel.

Have some water.

Ah, Kevin, like I said, the federal government was shut down, and I've been waiting a long time for this interview and this is the one I really I wanted to do them all.

But this one, this one's been one that with a lot of great questions, especially coming off the front lines and watching you guys do your job job.

It's been helpful.

And honestly, I'm sobered over this still, and I've been doing this for a while.

My first forest fire, as I said, was the Angora fire.

But listening to you, it's really important.

So thanks for the work you're doing and taking the time to walk us all through it.

Yeah, appreciate it.

Thanks for the opportunity to speak.

Kevin Mecham, U.S. forest Service Fire Specialist Be Truckee Strong now Truckee Strong now Fire will always be a part of our life in Truckee.

The question is not if it comes, but how it burns and how ready we are.

Thanks for listening to Community Conversations on Wildfire.

Stay safe, stay prepared and let's keep talking.

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Search KTKE this message provided by Truckee Fire as part of the Measure T Community Wildfire Prevention Fund.