City Clears 15 Acres of Brush Near Infamous Grace Slick Fire

Mill Valley fortunately hasn’t had many major wildfires in recent years, but the senior leadership of the has the memories at their fingertips.

Eighteen years ago, battalion chiefs Scott Barnes and Michael St. John were in the thick of a wildfire that was infamous both in scale and circumstance. Barnes and St. John found themselves racing to reports of flames as high as 50 feet rushing up a steep, v-shaped hillside toward homes above the at the end of Escalon Drive, with the home of onetime Jefferson Airplane singer Grace Slick right in the crosshairs.

“It was like a roaring train coming up that hill,” Barnes said.

The pair laid 1,000 feet of hose hoping that the Del Casa Fire Road and a shaded forest on the other side of it would slow down the blaze. Their instincts proved correct, and though the fire claimed 12 acres and Slick’s home, it could have been far worse.

“It was a good tactical decision,” said Fire Chief Jeff Davidson.

Barnes, who oversees the fire department’s vegetation management efforts, recently oversaw the clearing of 15 acres of thick brush along the Del Casa Fire Road, hoping to create an even more robust firebreak than what existed on that fateful day of Sept. 16, 1993. Subsequent work includes the cutting down and chipping of equally dry and dangerous oak trees that have fallen victim to Sudden Oak Death.

“This is the most hazardous type of situation we have in Mill Valley,” Barnes said as he overlooked the dry hillside below Slick's former home at 18 Escalon Drive. “It’s a south-facing aspect (meaning it gets loads of sun) with a deep, v-shaped drainage below. Fires roar up areas like this.”

The 15-acre clearing, which cost approximately $15,000, comes two years after the city cleared 15 adjacent acres along the same fire road further north. It is part of the Camino Alto Open Space Preserve project, a partnership with landowner Marin County Parks and Open Space District, to create firebreaks in a way that does not lead to infestations of invasive species like scotch and french broom.

The city contracted to have the area cleared, and the county will contract to use herbicide to target the re-sprouting of broom, pampas grass and acacia in spring 2012, 2013 and 2014. While reducing fire fuels is the primary goal, county officials also hope to restore native plants that predated the arrival of invasive broom, benefiting the Northern Spotted Owl, which inhabits the area.

The key, according to Elise Holland, the district’s chief of planning and resources, is to both reduce fire hazard risk for nearby homeowners and to eliminate invasive species that infest old firebreaks.

“Over the years, the Open Space District has seen the creation of hundreds of acres of fuelbreaks on our preserves and the subsequent invasion by broom,” Holland said. “Our partnership with Mill Valley Fire is critical to achieving both of our goals."

The city and county have teamed up on similar projects in recent years along the Blithedale Ridge Fire Road and between that fire road and Hillside Avenue. Another 18-acre clearing project on Alto Bowl is planned for 2012, Barnes said. 

“The county wants to remove these invasive species and we want to protect the community, so it’s a win-win for us,” Barnes said. “And this is definitely going to make a difference with fire behavior up here.”

Barnes said the clearing greatly improves conditions over those from when the Grace Slick fire occurred. That blaze started when sparks flew off the welding torches of county workers repairing a fire road access gate at the end of Del Casa Road, igniting dry grass. Slick successfully sued the county for damages but relocated to Malibu instead of returning to the home. The fire was just as infamous for what happened after it was extinguished, as multiple Corte Madera firefighters were accused of stealing items from Slick’s home, including a shotgun and some souvenir Jefferson Airplane backstage passes. They were dismissed.

Although Barnes didn’t target the Del Casa Fire Road project specifically because of its proximity to the Grace Slick fire, Davidson said examples of recent wildfires in Mill Valley serve as reminders to residents who think “it can never happen here.”

“Because a lot of our memory comes from faraway places, people think, ‘it’s on the news, it’s not a problem here,'” Davidson said. “But there is history here. Sometimes people don’t really understand the full breadth and depth of the exposure until there is something like a fire or an earthquake that captures their attention locally.”