Bay Area fire crews prepare as Red Flag Warning approaches
As the threat of fire ramps up starting Thursday and into the weekend, communities across the Bay Area are bracing for potential power outages and fire crews are getting ready for what could happen.
"Here, for instance, Bay Point along Highway 4, a lot of things can happen and do, " said Captain Chris Toler with the Contra Costa Fire Protection District. "This entire area is all dry fuels. And of course, with the dry conditions that always makes a fire that much more difficult."
Toler is thinking about trouble spots, the highway being one of them, ahead of a Red Flag Warning for the entire county and most of the Bay Area.
"We're up staffing special apparatus, our bulldozer program is being staffed over these next two days during this weather event," Toler said of the incoming weather.
It's a weather event that won't bring intense heat, but gusty winds with low humidity, at a time when hillsides are already causing problems without extreme conditions.
"There's no fuel moisture in the hills, as you can see from my window here in the office," Toler told CBS News Bay Area as he looks outside. "The grass is pretty dry."
"You know, when you have a red flag day, it's not always about the heat and the heat index," said Chief Damon Coving with the Oakland Fire Department. "It's about the wind, and what the wind can do to a small fire. Really drive it, have a wind-driven fire that can really take off."
On a day when clouds, and even the occasional few drops of rain passed through the Oakland Hills, the Oakland Fire Department was also making plans for the next several days.
"Because of the winds that are predicted," Covington explained. "Forty to fifty mile per hour winds at our high points, some of the things that we've done from a city standpoint is we are up staffing to Type 3 apparatus that will have throughout the hills."
PG&E has also issued a warning regarding Public Safety Power Shutoffs during the same period. Bay Area counties that could see shutoffs between Thursday and Saturday include Alameda, Contra Costa, Napa, Solano and Sonoma.
More information is available on the PG&E PSPS website.