What happens when local knowledge meets the machinery of government during the Timber and Plaskett Fires.

This is the fourth conversation in Living With Fire: Big Sur, an ongoing A Big Sur Podcast examination of the Timber and Plaskett Fires and of Big Sur’s larger relationship with wildfire.

The previous conversations have taken us to some different parts of the same emergency. Marcus Foster described experienced local residents protecting threatened properties during the early days of the Timber Fire and the sometimes difficult meeting between local knowledge and professional incident command. Lucas Handy brought us to the South Coast and into the remarkable sequence of experiencing Timber and then, only days later, responding to the Plaskett Fire close to his home and family at Treebones. Kate Novoa, Big Sur Kate, looked at another essential part of an emergency: information, rumor, verification and trust.

Now we follow some of those same voices into government.

Kate Daniels is Monterey County Supervisor for the Fifth District, which includes Big Sur. She first appeared on A Big Sur Podcast in 2023, when she was still a candidate. In that conversation she talked about wanting to be bold and visionary, about governing as a facilitator, and about treating elected office as a temporary opportunity to make a difference.

The Timber and Plaskett Fires gave those ideas a very different meaning.

Daniels describes recognizing early that Timber would not be an incident measured in hours; the extraordinary Monday when residents on a threatened ridge were asking for firefighting resources; her efforts to carry their information to Senator John Laird and CAL FIRE; and the realization that Big Sur needed a better way of getting reliable, on-the-ground information into county government.

Out of that came nightly meetings connecting community organizations and residents with the County Administrative Office. Daniels describes an evolving chain of communication: local people to community representatives, those representatives to the county, and the county to the agencies with the authority to act.

The conversation also exposes one of the central tensions of emergency government: responsibility without complete authority. A supervisor may be the person constituents call, but decisions about fire tactics, evacuation orders, Highway 1 closures and other critical actions belong to different agencies and officials.

We talk about CAL FIRE and the Forest Service, the Sheriff, CHP, Caltrans, the Emergency Operations Center, CERT, CABS and Big Sur Fire. We return repeatedly to the value, and the complications, of local knowledge: residents who know obscure ridge roads, water sources, turnarounds, fire history and the capabilities of their own properties in ways that an incoming crew simply cannot know immediately.

Daniels also talks candidly about frustration, anger, mistakes, strained relationships, and the need to preserve those relationships even while arguing forcefully for the community she represents.

And the conversation does not end when the flames recede.

With large burn scars above the coast, attention is already shifting toward winter: debris flows, blocked culverts, Highway 1, stream and river channels and the possibility that the next phase of this emergency will arrive with the rain.

Perhaps the most important question running through this episode is the one that has emerged across the entire series:

How do we take the knowledge, relationships and improvisations that helped during these fires and turn them into something that already exists when the next one begins?

Living With Fire: Big Sur continues with additional voices from the community, government, science and emergency response.

All comments much welcomed!

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This podcast is a production of the Henry Miller Memorial Library with support from The Arts Council for Monterey County!

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