First responders sent to wildfire

“We’re way behind before we get there,” said Menlo Park Fire Chief Harold Shapelhou-man, whose department is leading one of two San Mateo County strike teams responding to the fire. The other strike team is led by the San Mateo Consolidated Fire Department.

By Friday afternoon, Paradise was almost entirely destroyed, nine people were confirmed dead and the fire had grown to 140 square miles. The fire is 5 percent contained.

“Almost a whole community has disappeared from the face of the Earth and this is the third fire in a year that’s wiped out a Northern California community,” Shapelhouman said. “No one’s ever seen this kind of devastation until recently.”

He said last year San Mateo County personnel were deployed to 26 fires and three hurricanes, which set a record. This year, there have been about 21 fire deployments and three hurricane deployments.

“We probably would’ve broke [last year’s] record if we didn’t have a monthlong break in October,” he said. “Part of me thought maybe the fires are over for the year [in October], but a lot of us knew not to get complacent. These things happen in the blink of an eye.”

Last year, San Mateo County personnel were deployed to fight out-of-town wildfires in late December. Shapelhouman referenced a photo of firefighters on that deployment, wearing Christmas hats on the fire line.

“With the frequency of disasters, the amount of time and resources and personnel we’re spending — those are real impacts as well,” he said. “We are reimbursed, but that’s a process too.”

Shapelhouman said it’s a struggle balancing the needs of his community and emergencies elsewhere, adding that he’s running out of command staff to send up north. His second in command is currently serving as a strike team leader in Paradise.

And for some of the San Mateo County firefighters currently in Paradise, this is not their first deployment of the season.

In the Bay Area, a thick layer of smoke that drifted south from the wildfire has prompted numerous air quality warnings and serves as a reminder of the devastation occurring just hours away.

“People are irritated by the smoke, but you’re smelling the demise of people’s lives, their homes and the destruction of our ecosystem,” Shapelhouman said. “And we can’t look elsewhere anymore and say ‘hey, it only happens to them.’ We need to seriously look at what could happen to us.”

Shapelhouman acknowledged the marine layer and fog that keeps the Bay Area relatively safe from wildfires, but said much more needs to be done in San Mateo County to prepare.

“I worry about our greenbelt and the foothills above Interstate 280,” he said. “We have to start getting serious about thinning out our forested areas and getting rid of non-indigenous vegetation. We need bigger fire breaks even though that’s not attractive. … If the conditions and circumstances line up just right, it could be our demise.”

Shapelhouman also knows Paradise well; his parents lived there for 15 years.

“It was a community at risk and a very severe risk in terms of accessibility and topography,” he said. “And there’s a lot of elderly people who chose to move there and they may not be able to evacuate so easily. … Everyone always knew fire was a problem in that area.”

zachary@smdailyjournal.com

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