MENDOCINO CO., 5/15/26 — Members of the Mendocino and Humboldt County Prescribed Burn Associations were welcome guests at Tan Oak Park in Laytonville, on a cool late April Saturday morning that climbed slowly into springtime temperatures.
About two dozen students from both counties were there for a firelighter training, which Humboldt’s prescribed burn co-coordinator Henri Holbrook described as “a way to make a distinction between what classically you could only be if you were engaging with fire – a firefighter.”
He said that the prescribed burn associations were expanding that definition. “We’re changing that narrative to someone who uses good fire, as a firelighter,” Holbrook said. “That doesn’t mean we don’t put fires out. Sometimes we do have to put them out. But we’re just changing the tone: we’re not here to fight the fire, we’re here to set the fire.”
Holbrook developed the firelighter curriculum in 2023 as an informal initiation for people who want to help out on a burn but are not necessarily on their way to becoming fully certified “burn bosses.”
The training he and his colleagues provided on April 25 included basic fire science about weather, topography and botany — and of course, he included some adventure stories. Trainers from both counties’ prescribed burn associations answered detailed questions and introduced students to the fast-paced, mentally and physically demanding work of using fire to clear fuels and invasive plants from the landscape.
The first prescribed burn association on the coast
Humboldt’s prescribed burn association was the first of its kind on the West Coast. It was founded in 2017, a devastating year for fires in Northern California. Just the previous year, Lenya Quinn Davidson and Jeffrey Stackhouse, both advisors with the University of California Cooperative Extension in Humboldt County, traveled to Nebraska to see how landowners there were using beneficial fire. Since then, Holbrook said with a laugh, the Humboldt association has “kind of become a little bit of a beast,” with an email list of about 450. Around 150 of those participate in trainings, burns and events every year.
Holbrook and Gabriel Goff, the two coordinators at Humboldt, work for the UC Extension as the only two paid members of the mostly volunteer organization. “The ethic is that we pool resources, expertise, and labor to get burns and trainings done on private lands, in order to bring the responsibility of managing lands with fire back to private folks, community folks,” Holbrook emphasized.
Every year is different because of weather conditions, but he estimated that in 2025 the association worked on about 30 prescribed fires. “Part of that was supporting other people’s burns,” he specified. “We showed up and helped them get the resources to make it happen. Then we had maybe about 15 of our own fires, start to finish. We don’t burn for anybody; we help you burn for yourself.”
You don’t just set a fire
Prescribed burns are preceded by weeks and sometimes months of planning. Often, the forests have been neglected for so long that they require hand-thinning before it’s safe to put fire on the ground. Weather experts exchange lengthy analyses of hyper-local conditions – the water content of the trees, the most recent rain, the length of time since the last fire, and the diameter of the twigs are all factors in the calculations. Escape routes are carefully planned, and overhead hazards scouted.
But when the time comes, prescribed burns are fast-paced science, requiring instinct and tolerance of sensory overload. “It’s so visceral, and there’s so much going on,” co-coordinator Goff acknowledged. “Things are burning. It’s hot, it’s smoky, it’s windy, it’s crazy, there’s radio traffic going on, someone’s running a chainsaw.”
He said that fire requires hyperawareness. “You are a person standing in a place that’s got all these elements going on, from the plants to the water to the geology of the hillside that you’re on. Fire gives you a unique perspective to cut through the noise and realize, `I’m aware of what’s happening to so many different things at one time.’ You have to re-center and be like, ‘Oh, I can be aware of all those things all the time. And they all fit together.’”
Connecting the dots
Emily Lord, the education coordinator for the Mendocino County Fire Safe Council and coordinator of Mendocino County’s prescribed burn association, said she was grateful for the long-term experience of her Humboldt colleagues. “It’s a relatively small community of people involved in prescribed fire, and there is a huge culture of knowledge exchange and reciprocity in community fire,” she said, adding that she hoped to train more people to help out in both counties.
In addition to Lord, who taught the after-lunch weather session, Mendocino’s leadership included founding member and Chair Mike Jones, who is also the UC Extension’s forest advisor for Mendocino, Lake, and Sonoma counties. He was joined by the extension’s beneficial burning and tribal land stewardship advisor Ally Sung-Jereczek. They will be able to expand the training available in Mendocino County by importing content shared by Humboldt’s association.
Lord noted that weather in Mendocino County is complicated, since the topography is nothing like the flat fields of Nebraska. The weather report for Laytonville doesn’t distinguish between the ridges of Bell Springs Road and the damp crannies of Tan Oak Park.
“Local knowledge is always best,” said Will Emerson, Bell Springs Fire Department Chief. “Longtime residents gain an understanding of the microclimates in their area and can tell you that every day in the summer at 1 p,m., the wind is going to come out of the west and blow hard.
That local knowledge can save lives. “That might not show on the weather report, and might not be understood by the statewide fire agencies,” Emerson said. “Lots of times on big fires, they bring in incident command teams from elsewhere, and they don’t know the local weather and topography.”
Though Emerson’s local knowledge is specific to northern Mendocino County, he traveled further north to help out on some of Humboldt’s first prescribed burns. “Prescribed fire is excellent training for beginning firefighters,” Emerson said. “It helped them out, and it helped us out.”
Emerson’s interest in beneficial fire meshes well with his role as president of the Northern Mendocino Ecosystem Recovery Alliance, a community organization founded to restore watersheds and the economy, by putting people to work at jobs that help the natural world flourish. He’d like to see Tan Oak Park used as a training center for similar classes in sustainable stewardship.
Ellis Brandt, who offered a presentation on how to stay aware of hazards on prescribed burns, is one of the many experienced volunteers the Humboldt association relies on to help run burns and trainings. “You can’t help keep the forest healthy and safe if you’re not keeping yourself healthy and safe,” Brandt reflected, mentioning that the attitude among beneficial fire specialists supports taking breaks and staying well hydrated.
Brandt added that he believes fire is for everyone, from the youngest to the oldest members of a community. “I think that’s what fire has been for most of human history, and I think getting back to that is what we need to do – get more fire on the ground… You don’t need to be the prime physical specimen to interact with fire. It really is for everybody, and there’s a time and a place and a burn for everybody.”
Holbrook had some parting words: “Get involved with your local prescribed burn association,” he advised. “Fire is fun.”
For more information about you can involved with the Mendocino County Prescribed Burn Association, visit https://calpba.org/mendocino-pba
Sarah Reith writes for the Mendocino County Fire Safe Council.