Angel Island Prescribed Burn to Resume This Week
If you see smoke rising over Angel Island this week, don’t be alarmed — fire crews are set to continue a prescribed burn two weeks after a previous operation was paused.
A planned burn on Sept. 8 covered just 62 acres before stopping due to air quality concerns, according to a State Parks press release.
Smoke from Angel Island, the largest island in the San Francisco Bay, was visible throughout the East Bay and San Francisco.
Ryan Forbes, a spokesperson for California State Parks, said that fire officials decided to hold off after looking at upcoming weather conditions and receiving feedback from the community.
“We actually plan around needing to postpone burns,” Forbes said. “We really only like to burn when conditions are ideal, and we’re in San Francisco, where weather conditions can change a lot.”
While prescribed burns make air quality worse in the short run, contributing to negative health outcomes, Stanford University researchers have shown that annual prescribed burns can reduce exposure to wildfire smoke by as much as 25% in California’s worst wildfire years.
Forbes said State Parks takes a number of environmental factors into consideration while planning burn days.
“We’re not burning on super wet ground,” he said. “We are not burning on a day where the air is really stale, and it’s just going to sit right where we are. We want good dispersal and we also want it to be on a day, where there’s not as many particulates in the air.”
Cal Fire and the Marin County Fire Department will work with State Parks on Wednesday to finish the burn aimed at reducing the amount of grass, shrubbery and other flammable vegetation.
Periodically burning this vegetation reduces wildfire risk and gets funded through a Proposition 4 2024 Climate Bond, the press release said.
In 2008, a wildfire burned almost half of the island — the prescribed burn aims to avoid another catastrophe before it’s too late.
“It’s very difficult to get resources over there on a quick timeline,” Forbes said. “We need to bring them over on a landing craft — of which there’s really only one in the Bay.”
The park remains open, although the park’s fire and perimeter roads, as well as portions of the Ida Trail and Sunset Trail, will be closed.
State Parks officials asked residents not to call 911 if smoke appears over the island and said that residents will likely see smoke from 9 a.m. to 6 p.m. on burn days and up to three days after. Most of the smoke will come in the early morning and early afternoon, Forbes said.
KQED’s Natalia Navarro contributed to this report.