Jan. 17—City leaders on Wednesday said Lodi has undertaken a number of mitigation efforts to help prevent disaster in the wake of large-scale wildfires like those ravaging Southern California.
“The best way to fight those fires is to prevent those fires,” Lodi Fire Chief Ken Johnson told the Lodi City Council during its Wednesday meeting.
“When we talk about cleanups around your property, getting down limb materials or leaves from your gutters, moving tree limbs from over your property, those fuels that can commute fire from one property to another, those mitigation efforts matter,” Johnson said.
City Manager Scott Carney asked Johnson and Lodi Electric Utility director Jeff Berkheimer to describe what plans their departments have in place should events like the Palisades and Eaton fires happen here.
Johnson said while a fire like the Palisades — which has burned nearly 24,000 acres and destroyed more than 1,600 structures — could happen in Lodi, he assured the city council and residents that his department is staffed every day with four engines, one truck and 15 personnel to handle emergencies.
In addition, San Joaquin County Office of Emergency Services provides the department with an apparatus to use in large-scale incidents.
“No fire department in California is ready for something like what just happened in Southern California,” he said. “It takes all of us to respond and make that happen.”
That OES apparatus, Johnson said, was sent to the Palisades and Eaton fires last week along with 44 crew members from the various departments and districts within San Joaquin County.
More than 500 firefighters from across the region — San Joaquin, Sacramento, Calaveras, Amador and Stanislaus, among other counties — have responded to the blazes, he said.
Some of the factors that exacerbated the Southern California situation, Johnson said, included thick forested areas that had not been deforested in about a decade, the dry 100-mile-an-hour Santa Ana winds, the mountainous topography and the stressed or inoperable water systems.
The Los Angeles city and county fire departments were overrun and overworked, he added, as the number of citizens needing rescue limited suppression efforts. The strong winds also hindered air attacks, which in turn made it difficult for ground crews to fight the blazes.
“I know Southern California and the Sierra Nevadas have fires every year,” Johnson said. “But the way these events took place is historic. We will study these fires for decades to come. This is not going to be a short fire campaign. We are going to be supporting these efforts for weeks to come.”
One of the ways the city has mitigated wildfire risk here at home has been to deforest the Lodi Lake Nature Preserve, after the atmospheric river events of 2023, which downed all the 300-year-old oak trees in the park.
“Christina (Jaromay, parks director), Charlie (Swimley, public works director) and I created a plan to take some of that downed timber and some of that fuel loading on the ground, and created some fire suppression so we’d have the ability to fight fires like that if we were faced with those wind conditions,” he said.
Johnson also noted that his department has a mutual aid agreement with several other departments and districts in the region that aids in fighting major incidents, such as the Pacific Coast Producers blaze last August.
Some 17 fire trucks from the Stockton Fire Department, and the Woodbridge, Liberty, Mokelumne and Cosumnes fire districts responded to the blaze.
Johnson said his department also has the ability to call off-duty personnel to respond in times of major events.
Berkheimer said Lodi’s location makes the city a low-risk region for wildfires. However, he said that doesn’t mean there aren’t risks to operating the Lodi Electric Utility system.
That being said, his staff has removed 400,000 feet of overhead copper conductor and conduit over the last five years.
“That has a very serious history of falling, breaking and coming down in storms to cause fires,” he said. “As of 10 months ago, we have none of that left in our system. A lot of other utilities have millions of circuit feet of that stuff, and that’s going to be a concern as we move forward.”
Berkheimer said his staff has replaced 638 sets of line fuses and has conducted more than 6,000 tests on wood poles over the last three years. In addition, new equipment has recently been purchased to perform more intensive tests to identify any deteriorated poles that may be susceptible to fire, he said.
The utility has spent more than $2 million a year on vegetation management, he said, which included trimming nearly 1,500 trees and and removing 200 that were in danger of falling into power lines.
While no official cause of any of the five fires in Southern California have been determined, Berkheimer said there are indications that electric utility companies in the region may be responsible.
“The utility industry as a whole is going to be taking a step further toward risk mitigation than we have in the past,” he said. “Even though it is very unlikely we see 100-mile-an-hour wind gusts with drought conditions and the Santa Ana-type scenario, we’re going to do everything we can to make sure there is nothing we could have done, or that we overlooked in years to come.”
Mayor Cameron Bregman thanked the Lodi Fire Department for deploying personnel to Southern California, but wanted to differentiate between the incidents that occurred in town last summer, and what is currently being fought.
He also called for a moment of silence in memory of those who lost their lives in the fires this past week.
“In an industrial area, it’s a work environment,” he said. “Things are burnt up that can be replaced. But in these fires, people’s homes are being burnt. Heirlooms, history, family photos, things that are irreplaceable… I think all of Lodi’s hearts go out to those in LA right now.”