A remote community in rural Mendocino County is grateful for a fuel-reduction project, after a vehicle fire along a newly maintained roadside was quickly doused.

Late in the morning of July 13, an RV caught fire near a private driveway about two miles up Bell Springs Road near Laytonville. “When vehicles burn, especially something like an RV or a trailer, … they put out very toxic smoke, and they burn very hot,” explained Bell Springs Fire Department Chief Will Emerson. “This thing was fully engulfed.”

Fortunately, CAL FIRE and volunteer firefighters from Laytonville and Leggett got to the scene and were able to suppress the flames. This was thanks, in part, to recently completed fuel-reduction work along the first five miles of Bell Springs Road, which made it relatively easy.

Emerson described how that location looked just a few months ago. “Where the vehicle fire was, probably within about five feet of it, had been very thick brush and ladder fuels under a live oak tree and a fir tree”—potentially a recipe for a major conflagration, he recalled. “There is no doubt that if that fuel had still been there, it would have burst into flames from the radiant heat and taken off into the trees.”

Embers were also flying across the road from the RV into what had been thick brush along a steep dropoff. Emerson believes that “There’s a very good chance that if that brush had still been there, the fire would have caught in there and then raced up the hill. There’s a number of houses up above, so that could have been very bad.”

Travel on Bell Springs Road is precarious all year. The narrow, tree-lined route rises about 1500 feet for the first three miles off Highway 101 in the northern reaches of the county. It climbs the steep sides of a canyon, along the edges of vertical dropoffs, before it flattens out along the ridge and starts to open up.

The Bell Springs area’s Neighborhood Fire Safe Council, which is closely associated with the local fire department, has been concerned about the thick vegetation along that road for a while. In the spring of 2025, the Mendocino County Fire Safe Council was awarded a CAL FIRE grant to thin the first five miles of brush along Bell Springs Road, up to fifty feet from the road. To help it happen, the neighborhood group needed to help secure permissions from roadside landowners to reduce fuels on their properties.

Emerson was satisfied with the work by all parties, reporting that “The crew that did it, Elk Ridge Tree Service, are all local people, so they really took pride in their work and did a great job. Of course, the Fire Safe Council was great in organizing it.”

It’s not the first time there has been a vehicle fire on Bell Springs. Emerson recalled an instance years ago, when a flatbed truck with a heavy load and mechanical problems tried to climb the steep grade. The truck traveled out from below the tree limbs before its internal combustion became external, narrowly avoiding disaster. Luck played a role in that incident, as it always does when there’s a fire on the mountain that does not end in disaster.

This year’s RV fire struck when there was still some moisture in the ground, during an unusually cool summer, on a day when firefighters didn’t have much else going on. But preparation is an even more important factor, as illustrated by this community that got organized, worked with the Mendocino County Fire Safe Council, and succeeded in removing a mass of brush that would have been alongside the RV when it ignited.

Managing vegetation in areas at high risk of fire is one way to reduce the role of luck in these scenarios—and Emerson knows there’s plenty more to do. “All this land is overgrown,” he reflected. “It needs to be thinned and managed. That’s the work ahead.”

There will be a benefit fundraiser for the Bell Springs Volunteer Fire Department on August 30, 2025 at Tan Oak Park in Leggett, from 4:00 pm until it’s over. The event will include food, music, craft beer and cider, and a raffle. First prize, Emerson promised, is a cord of wood cut by a firefighter.

If you’d like to learn how the Mendocino County Fire Safe Council can help your community apply for funding and organize fire-resiliency projects, you can visit firesafemendocino.org.