HAVILAH, Calif. (KERO) — As of August 26, 2024 The Borel Fire is 95 percent contained — but flooding and debris flows caused by burnt land present a hazard that will remain for years to come.
- A Burn Area Emergency Response (B.A.E.R) Team is a group of experts that assess lands after large wildfires. They look at watersheds to identify areas that are at high risk of flooding.
- One of the key pieces of data they produce is a post-fire soil burn severity map, which can be used to guide flood mitigation measures.
- Abby Bolt, Havilah resident, has seen debris flows on her ranch before, and is advocating for flood mitigation measures to start taking place immediately.
BROADCAST TRANSCRIPT:
“The real indicator is when you're walking through this stuff your boots melt into the ash, and you just don't even feel anything firm underneath your feet. That's because it is all ash, and it burns so hot that it took every piece of vegetation that was there and crumbled it into ash,”said Havilah resident Abby Bolt.
Bolt, who worked as a wildland firefighter for 25 years, is showing me around her ranch in Havilah and explaining not all burn scar is the same, soil in some areas is burned more severely.
“In a place like this, you can see the intensity of it,” Bolt said.
A Burned Area Response Team or B.A.E.R. Team - helps identify these areas of high burn severity.
The team is comprised of –
“A group of watershed specialists that come in and try to evaluate how these watersheds are going to behave after the fire and what sort of flooding or debris flow hazards exist,” Andrew Keith Stone said.
Stone helped lead the Borel Fire B.A.E.R. Team.
For the past couple of weeks the team has been assessing the burned area of the Borel Fire - identifying risks and providing recommendations to mitigate those risks.
“The key piece of that modeling is this map you see behind me, which is a soil burn severity map,” Stone said.
This map encompasses the entire are of the fire and helps identify where risk is highest.”
“Havilah canyon is through this area here, and this is all draining that direction, so the red is all high soil burn severity, the yellow is moderate, the turquoise color is low,” Stone explained.
In areas with high burn severity - the risk for flooding and debris flow is higher because the soil more easily erodes.
“It never feels good when you are in the red on a map,” Bolt said.
Bolt’s ranch is surrounded by federally owned land that was intensely burned. Now she’s working to protect her ranch from flooding and debris flow and advocating for help from government agencies.
“About 14 years ago, we had a fire here called the Canyon fire,” Bolt recalled.
The land around her house was burned, but no mitigation measures were taken by the federal agencies that owned that land.
“A year later, there was a day of thunderstorms in June that came – and like a freight train coming down the hill, large boulders and debris all crashed into our front yard at once.”
She also remembers the Piute fire. This video shows the intense flooding and debris flows that resulted in the Kern River Valley due to burn-scarred land.
She says this is a risk the Borel Fire presents to all of the Kern River Valley.
“Not only in the fire area, where people have already lost their homes, but it's also going to hit Lake Isabella just as hard as it did before.”
The B.A.E.R. Team provides recommendations, but it’s up to government agencies such as the Bureau of Land Management, the U.S Forest Service, and Kern County to enact those mitigation measures.
Bolt is an outspoken advocate for mitigation measures to start taking place.
“I would like to see them start coming in from the top, because it's all accessible, start coming in and doing diversion, different constructional diversion techniques, whether it's wattles,” Bolt said, “And even getting seeding started in some places will be helpful.”
The increased risk of flooding and debris flow lasts for years after the fire is gone.
Bolt says there is only so much property owners can do, and that ultimately it’s up to these government agencies.
“The hard part is that politically and socially, it's forgotten about because it's quieter. Folks have to move on to the next disaster, right? So it's important that we keep the focus on this burn area, especially it being the largest in Kern County. I think that's going to help. But we can't let them forget the importance of this.”
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