Barbecue ban during wildfire season? Residents in this California county are demanding it

UPDATE >> El Dorado County locks down its public barbecues in advance of Labor Day weekend

Last Saturday, Janet Maineri saw the unthinkable: fresh coals littering the ground from an overflowing barbecue grill at Henningsen Lotus Park, on the South Fork of the American River in rural El Dorado County.

Maineri, a Coloma resident for over 20 years, snapped pictures of the barbecue and surrounding dead brush, completely baffled that someone would light a fire at the park with the Caldor Fire devouring more than 200,000 acres of the county.

“Why are we still allowing barbecues and campfires in our parks?” Maineri said.

With Labor Day weekend approaching, Maineri is spearheading a petition drive asking the Board of Supervisors to immediately ban open fires and charcoal grills in the county – on both public and private lands – through the end of the wildfire season.

The Caldor Fire began about 20 miles northwest of Coloma. With almost half of the county’s territory under a mandatory evacuation order, Maineri has seen evacuees flood into her town. The rest of the county remains at a high fire risk, with the majority of the county at the highest level of drought conditions.

“We want our county to implement an emergency ban on all open fires in El Dorado County … effective immediately so that we don’t become the next Caldor Fire,” Maineri said. The petition has more than 400 signatures.

Because the Forest Service has closed all of California’s national forests, and the state has banned open fires at some of its parks, Maineri and other petition signers fear that the county’s parks will be inundated with visitors hosting barbecues.

“We welcome them, but we don’t want anyone to be lighting fires,” Maineri said.

Sue Novasel, a supervisor who represents the Tahoe area and much of the Caldor burn zone, said she supports a ban on open fires at public parks. She said she’d want to give more thought to whether open fires should be banned on private property, too.

“We need to be responsible; we have people who’ve lost everything because of the fires,” said Novasel, a South Lake Tahoe resident who was among the thousands who evacuated. “I think we have an obligation to keep our community safe. I certainly am concerned about public lands and open fires.”

Lotus resident Mary DeRiemer, who supports the petition, said she’s worried about people firing up grills this weekend, even as much of the county is plagued with foul air from the Caldor Fire.

“We will see it,” she said.”It is insane that people are lighting fires when the air quality is bad.”

State bans wood and charcoal fires in Sierra district

Other government agencies have already moved to restrict fires.

Days after the Caldor Fire started, the state Department of Parks and Recreation banned wood and charcoal fires in its Sierra district, which includes Donner, Tahoe State Recreation Area, Ed Z’berg Sugar Pine Point State Park and Emerald Bay. All have since been closed altogether as the Caldor Fire has poured into the Tahoe basin.

Meanwhile, the Sierra County Board of Supervisors voted unanimously to ban outdoor fires in June on all private property in the unincorporated area of the county. The ban is reviewed monthly and will either be terminated if conditions improve or on Nov. 1, whichever comes first.

Before the new ban in California’s state parks, campgrounds in the Tahoe region allowed campfires and charcoal grills except for days with red flag warnings. In some parts of the county, fire districts were already prohibiting wood and charcoal fires at people’s homes.

The petition signers say it’s time to surrender the joy of barbecue to keep the county safe.

“If we’re willing to give up some of the little pleasures, we’ll gain so much more,” said Linda Whitney, a resident of Somerset, near the western edge of the Caldor Fire burn zone, who evacuated at the beginning of the fire and returned home this week. “We may not have a campfire in our campsite, but we’ll still have a campsite to go to.”

This story was originally published September 3, 2021 at 5:00 AM with the headline "Barbecue ban during wildfire season? Residents in this California county are demanding it."