Mower-riding man arrested in connection with 11-acre Geyserville blaze as Cal Fire strengthens enforcement

Local Cal Fire officials have now arrested two men over the past week for starting wildland fires with grass-cutting equipment, making it clear the agency means business when it talks about maximum enforcement of fire safety laws as wildfire season ramps up.

The second arrest was reported Sunday and involved a Cloverdale man suspected of accidentally starting Saturday’s 11-acre Pocket Fire northeast of Geyserville.

He was using a riding mower at the time to cut 4-foot-tall dry grass, Cal Fire said.

The flames broke out just before 11:20 a.m. in a combustible area of the Mayacamas Mountains during a red flag warning, signaling hot and dry conditions ripe for fueling wildfires.

The alleged offenses include a felony violation for unlawfully causing a fire, for which a conviction could yield a 3-year prison sentence, though it also can be charged as a misdemeanor. Cal Fire did not release the man’s name.

Last week, a Yuba County man was arrested for using a weed-whacker that sparked a 16-acre fire in dried grass and shrubs Wednesday near Lower Lake in Lake County. He was arrested for alleged commission of three misdemeanors related to unlawful ignition of fires. The so-called Adams Fire began at after 3:30 p.m.

A few months ago, before fire conditions became so extreme, those same individuals might have been let off with a warning and some instructions about when it’s safe to address overgrown fuels, Cal Fire Public Safety Information Officer Jason Clay said.

Cal Fire will now be arresting people who take unnecessary risks with devices that may throw sparks or otherwise ignite a fire, causing otherwise preventable fire, Clay said.

There’s a time for doing fuel reduction and creating defensible space to try to reduce fire risk, Clay said, but it’s not when temperatures are soaring, and weeks of heat and breezy afternoons have parched the landscape.

Right now, with fires lighting off daily around the region and the state, such efforts are more likely to cause a fire.

“Some of these cases, because of the conditions, it’s just negligence,” Clay said Sunday.

He said so far this year, 34% of the fires in Cal Fire’s six-county Sonoma-Lake-Napa Unit have been sparked by equipment, while another 26% involved debris burning that got out of control.

Of the remainder, 8% were caused by vehicles, 6% some other human cause, and 10% other, disparate causes. No cause has yet been determined in 15%.

The Pocket Fire broke out around 11:19 a.m. Saturday at Pocket Ranch and Ridge Oaks roads.

It was within the footprint of the 2017 Pocket Fire, which started past midnight on Oct. 9, 2017 amid a storm of wildfire around the region that included the Tubbs, Nuns and Atlas fires. The 2017 Pocket Fire burned across 17,357 acres. Six structures were destroyed and two were damaged in that blaze, according to Cal Fire’s incident page.

Cal Fire crews and assisting agencies quickly jumped on Saturday’s blaze and were able to contain it to 10.9 acres in about an hour.

The blaze was hindered slightly by a road on one side, which helped firefighters to more quickly extinguish it, Clay said no structures were damaged or destroyed, and no injuries were reported.

Cal Fire later determined that someone had been riding a John Deere D125 lawn mower in the area right around the time the fire started. The mower is “designed for wet, green lawns, not for dry weeds or grass,” a Cal Fire news release said.

Clay said he did not know definitively how the fire was ignited, but metal blades can strike rocks or glass and make sparks. Buildup underneath the mower also can catch fire and spread, he said.

The suspect was arrested in the aftermath on Saturday and was booked into Sonoma County jail on the felony charge and three misdemeanors that include a violation of a California Health and Safety code by causing the fire through negligence or carelessness. He also was arrested for violating two California Public Resource codes by using a gasoline-powered tool on or near flammable grasses and causing a fire on land he does not own without the owner’s permission.

Clay did not have information on why the man was on the property where he was mowing. It was not clear if he was still in custody Sunday.

Clay said the temperature was at least 99 degrees, with relative humidity of about 22% when Saturday’s fire started, meaning the overabundance of grass from heavy winter rains was at its most receptive to sparks.

Vegetation management and any use of equipment is preferable in the earlier part of the year, when the landscape is still moist, Clay said.

Anyone still using mowers and the like should try to do so before 10 a.m., or when temperatures are below 80 degrees and relative humidity is above 30%, he added.

To learn more about preparing for the threat of wildfire, visit ReadyForWildfire.org.

You can reach Staff Writer Mary Callahan (she/her) at 707-521-5249 or mary.callahan@pressdemocrat.com. On X (Twitter) @MaryCallahanB.

You can reach Staff Writer Madison Smalstig at madison.smalstig@pressdemocrat.com. On X (Twitter) @madi.smals.