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THURSDAY JULY 5, 2012 www.redbluffdailynews.com See Page 4A Breaking news at: Pastimes Art Association Show Opening RED BLUFF BoSox Swept SPORTS 1B Sunny 96/64 Weather forecast 8B DAILYNEWS TEHAMACOUNTY DAILY 50¢ T H E V O I C E O F T E H A M A C O U N T Y S I N C E 1 8 8 5 Fire guts county building City beefs up police department By RICH GREENE DN Staff Writer A restructuring of the Red Bluff Police Department's management to create three new corporal positions, led to a council discussion regarding how much priority should be placed on public safety. The council approved the reclassification of three police positions by a 4-1 vote at its June 26 special meeting, with the lone dissenter, Councilwoman Daniele Jackson, strongly criticizing the plan's fiscal impact. "Everything we do is police-centric and it needs to stop now," she said. Jackson said Red Bluff was headed down a slippery slope by giving everything to the police department at the detriment of the entire city. Her opinion was vocally opposed by Councilmen See POLICE, page 7A prayer with council By JULIE ZEEB DN Staff Writer Daily News photo by Chip Thompson Fire broke out just before 3 p.m. Wednesday in the Tehama County Department of Child Support Services on Diamond Avenue in Red Bluff.A Calfire spokesman at the scene said the cause of the fire had yet to be determined. Initially isolated to the east wing of the building, mostly in the attic, by 4 p.m. the entire building was fully engulfed and flames had jumped into nearby vegetation. Crews had to cut through a locked gate to get to the grass fire that started about 200 yards to the northwest of the building. Diamond Avenue is shut down at Interstate 5. No further information was available Wednesday evening. Los Molinos streets lined for parade CORNING — The City Council gave direc- tion at its June 26 meet- ing to City Attorney Michael Fitzpatrick to write a policy that invo- cations given before meetings be given only by council members. The city receive Corning opts to keep ing to give the invoca- tion, which is what sparked the question of needing a written policy or whether an unwritten one would work, Mayor Gary Strack said. request from a member of the community ask- a cy was that the invoca- tion was only to be given by the mayor or vice mayor, Strack said. Fitzpatrick gave the See CORNING, page 7A Derby brings back old time fun By CHIP THOMPSON DN editor Brett Jones said he started the annual Red Neck Derby races to encourage fathers to build the cars with their sons and daughters, but Wednesday morning as the homemade carts rolled down hill at Rancho Tehama, Jones was having as much fun as anyone. Split into three age groups for children — Pee Wee for 1-5 year, Junior for 5-10 years and Teens — participants build their own soapbox derby entries and then glide them off a steep ramp and down a sloping curve just south of the Rancho Tehama Fire Station. While the derby pro- See DERBY, page 7A Daily News photos by Chip Thompson Hundreds of spectators turned out Wednesday morning for the annual Fourth of July Parade and Play Day in Los Molinos. Dozens of entries left from the Veterans Memorial Hall on Sherwood Boulevard and traveled north on Highway 99E, which remained open with lanes shifted to the west. The Play Day events followed in Mill Creek Park. News tip? Call 527-2151 7 5 8 5 5 1 6 9 0 0 1 9 SACRAMENTO (MCT) — Intense and deeply destructive "super fires," like Colorado's cur- rent Waldo Canyon Fire, which has claimed two lives and burned 350 homes, are almost assured in Northern California's future, according to a U.S. Forest Service scientist. "Typically we're seeing an earlier fire season and that fire season is lasting longer," said Malcolm North, plant ecologist with the Pacific South- west Research Station of the U.S. Forest Service. North works out of the station's Davis, Calif., office. Prior unwritten poli- Daily News photo by Chip Thompson Contestants speed down the course during the Red Neck Derby Wednes- day in Rancho Tehama. 'Super fires' like in Colo. nearly inevitable in NorCal 'When I started 18 years ago the season was pretty much confined to late July through early October. This past year we had fires in December, Jan- uary and February, and that's highly unusual for us' — Beth Brady, US Forest Service The culprits, said North, are weather fluctu- ations and climate change. He said the warmer temperatures and drier winters seen recent- ly in the region are creat- ing ideal conditions for intense and hard to con- trol fires like the Colorado fire. "What we're seeing now is that snow reserves are less in the Sierras and runoff is happening earli- er in the year," he said. That creates drier con- ditions in areas where fires burn hottest _ the forests. The most difficult to deal with are "crown fires," whose flames trav- el from one tree to anoth- er, usually at high speed. It is common for crown fires to move at 30 mph, North said. "Data show that since the 1980s there has been an increase in both the size of fires and acreage of burn, and particularly the burn severity," he said. "We now know from research that high severity fires, such as crown fires, generally made up 10 to 15 percent of the area of a forest fire. Currently, the average is more like 30 to 35 percent." He said drier condi- tions at lower elevations, such as grasslands, will also lead to more fires, which are vexing because they move fast and burn closer to homes and build- ings. These fires will also be seen earlier in the sea- son. Typically, it only takes two weeks after the last rain for grassland plants to dry out and become fire prone, North said. "We live in a Mediter- ranean climate, so plants here are adapted to three to four months of drought yearly, but what appears to be happening now is that we're getting droughts lasting more like five to six months," he said. proved an active fire sea- son. In El Dorado County, from Jan. 1 to June 29 of this year, 76 fires burned more than 140 acres. Last year saw 48 fires and 44 acres burned in approxi- mately the same time frame, according to data from the California Department of Forestry and Fire Protection. The largest fire years This year has already See FIRES, page 7A