Travis County Commissioners Court
December 6, 2011 (Agenda)
Item 3
Fire marshal still here?
3.
consider and take appropriate action on an order concerning outdoor burning in the unincorporated areas of Travis County.
>> good morning, judge, fire marshal and dan hobby executive director for emergency services.
this last week we have been out in the field visiting many of the sites where citizens were calling around wanting to burn and for the most part, people were doing what we feel like they needed to do but there were a number of issues we found.
one gentleman had a fire within three feet of his house.
we had a couple of fires that were unattended but part of the action as I told you last week in an email that these marshals went out in the field, it was for informational and not punitive.
it was to explain to them how the process should be done and how to do it in a safe manner and further uncouraging people to contact the fire department.
they did find a few burns where people decided since the burn ban was lifted I will burn and they did not contact the local fire department.
so we spent quite a number of hours with different marshals out in the field and we met with a number of fire chiefs this past Friday talking about having a permit process for the entire county, and currently there are four emergency service districts that have a permit process.
two of those esds are charging fees and going and visiting the sites prior to the burn.
they generally limit the burn period in their permit to a certain number of days.
the other two esds have a personality process, there is no fee associated with it but they look at the sites so they have a permit that is revocable if someone complains or if someone doesn't take appropriate action they need to be taking.
the majority of the other esds are create a log.
they call in and create a log.
some have a voice mail system where people leave information they are going to burn, but in the discussion, it was pretty much a general consensus that Travis County is not the rural area that it was 20 years ago.
we have more than a million people now.
our neighbors are much closer and we need to be much more cognizant of the actions that we take and they affect our neighbors.
one of the fd chiefs mentioned one of the areas he worked previously they would not allow on a burn on a piece of property less than two and a half acres and another didn't allow burning of household waste and there is a general consensus if you are going to issue a permit you have to visit the site, because with the permit would come the requirement of some responsibility.
but also just as important would be the education aspect.
so I believe what the chiefs plan to do, every one of them, not all of the se chiefs were there -- to bring this up as the January capital area fire chiefs meeting.
iv suspect it will be go out to a subcommittee to be discussed in January and a report will come out in February about possible actions and in that subcommittee meeting, which I always at the end, my attention is to ask for the chiefs that do not have inspector with their associations to invite those particular esd chiefs to come and have a part so everyone who will share the part of the load will have an impact into the permit process.
and, also, out of that meeting, we discussed what actions to recommend to the court for today and the general consensus is to recommend that no action be taken by the court today which in effect would mean there would not be a burn ban in Travis County for the upcoming week.
>> we have gotten a lost of rain the last few days.
>> that's correct.
>> has that been county wide?
>> it has been pretty much.
it varied from just over 3 inches in some areas and just over 2 inches?
some area.
the net effect on drought index is it dropped where almost 500 before and down to 342 now.
the really good news ability that is that rain came over a period of three days -- the really good news about that.
so not a lot of it filled up the lake.
a lot of it has soaked into the ground and the small fuels.
>> any additional rain will probably run off, though, I guess, because the ground is so saturated?
>> if we get more rain now, it probably will go to the streams and into the lakes.
>> yes.
>> but for right now, it has been very beneficial for --
>> exactly.
>> -- going down into the soil.
>> can you elaborate a little bit on the permits, because I think the four permits that are in place are in theme and variation and one of the things I would like to have you address is that -- going out and expecting the size of the pile and what implications that has in the process.
>> the emergency service district that are currently issuing permits are going out and looking at a site and they will issue -- if they do agree that burning can be done safely, they will issue a permit for that site and then that permit is only for a specific time period for specific materials.
in other words, one of them limits it to two weeks.
another one, may limit it to 90 days but the fire has to be, you can only burn on your property in this particular place.
and, again, these are revocable.
two of these have fees associated with them.
others do not.
I spoke to the esd-8 fire chief and over the last two weeks, they received requests for 185 different burns.
that's -- and there were some that burned that didn't call.
so the net effect of that is that there is going to be a lot of man hours going into the field if a permit is required prior to a burn.
and if you don't have the number of people to go and allow everybody to burn, then you will have a less number of control burns going on at any one given time.
if the ultimate goal is to never have a fire get out of control, you would just say, well, you can't have any fire.
if, in fact, you need fire to be able to use it as a tool, the next best thing is to educate, examine and permit a burn.
and these will be considered among the local burn chiefs in my office.
>> I applaud that and you touched on something I was going to elaborate on ever so slightly for the benefit of the court, around that was the number of controlled burns in some of the different esds.
thank goodness we had the rain last week but I think these numbers will indicate why I almost had a meltdown last week in not putting if burn back in place, because esd-1 which is a large esd on the north side of the lake, from jones town to lagovista had 162 controlled notices last week and they don't have a burn permit process in place, so there is no inspection of the pile and -- the fire marshal mentioned esd-8 which is where the big wild fire was, and those counties don't have a burn process in plain and the third number of burns is number 12 on the eastside and they don't have a permit in place.
so applaud to moving forward to trying to get a consensus on a good safeway to do permitting that will allow the inspection of the pile in the process, because we have people in this drought who are not experienced in burns and they don't understand that a big pile may be bigger than they can control when they start it so the fire department hasn't expected it, then we are at risk and I would also like to point out in esd-8, perdinalis, there were two minor out of control burns that they addressed last week.
that is kind of scary.
so, I think we are moving forward in a good way and I believe we have had enough rain that we can go another week without addressing a burn ban.
that's where I will be.
>> so the esds do not have a permitting process in place, have the authority but simply have not taken action?
>> I believe that's correct.
I think there is a way for them to actually permit and inspect a burn pile, and that, while it won't come under a fire code, there is state rules regarding outdoor burning regardless of a fire code adoption one way or the other.
>> they indicated an intention to reviz they in January?
>> the chiefs will address it and my expectation is since they have a subcommittee that addresses inspection code enforcement, that's where the product will be created and brought back to them for their approval.
>> does Travis County have the authority to adopt a fee for issuing a permit?
yes.
through the fire code, we do.
>> all right.
does the fire code set forth the amount of the fee?
>> the fire code does not.
it -- a fee or termination, that would be -- a fee or determination, would need to be made by the court.
>> so do we need to look at a policy or something regarding the appropriate fee from the county.
>> I think so.
>> I pulled the permitting processees for the esds that had one, so that's one together.
if it makes sense for them, maybe it does for us.
>> hershel is part of this committee and we will be part of the process and we will be bringing something back to the court.
>> I guess I was focused more on Travis County than esds, but those are our partners so we ought to do roughly the same thing.
anything else?
recommendation to take no action today.
questions, comments?
>> thank you.
thank you very much.
keep up the good work and sorry to take so long to get to you.
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