Local Residents Claim Prescribed Burn in Nevada City Was Poorly Communicated

A prescribed (controlled) burn was started on May 29, 2025 in Nevada City, California. 

As smoke moved from Nevada City to a wider area of Western Nevada County, members of local Facebook Groups started to ask the other members about the location of a potential fire. “Anyone know about the fire we are smelling and seeing,” asked someone named Terra. Locals were showing an increasing amount of concern. 

A woman named Cathy replied, “A very poorly conducted Rx burn,” adding “There was zero signage or notification of most neighboring properties until today.” Another commenter named Vickie replied, “sure be nice if they’d let people know.” 

Watch Duty (a mobile app that shows wildfires and prescribed burns) is usually apprised of prescribed burns in order to communicate them to app users. However, even Watch Duty did not display any information about the burn. 

Nevada City’s official Facebook Page posted about the prescribed burn at 1:08pm, hours after the process had started, writing, “Smoke Noticeable due to a Prescribed Fire / May 29, 2025 at 10:11 AM First Rain Land Stewardship Services will conduct a prescribed burn on Thursday, May 29th near Newtown Rd. and Personeni Lane. Smoke will be visible from the junction of Newtown Rd. and Jones Bar Rd.”

However, some residents who lived closest to the prescribed burn claimed that they had seen the signs for weeks preceding the burn, posted locally in physical locations. 

The smoke was visible well beyond the limits stated, filling the air throughout Grass Valley. Local businesses could smell the smoke throughout their offices. 

The purpose of the burn was reported by local government to “reduce fuel loading and to improve the fire-resilience of the forest and neighborhood.” Official sources said the incident was part of the Sierra Foothill Forest Climate Resilience project planned by Sierra Streams Institute within the Jones Bar Firewise Community. The project was funded by a grant from the Wildlife Conservation Board. CalFire approved the permit for the burn, which would require 15 workers and cover approximately 13 acres. 

A photo of immense clouds of smoke were posted by a local resident named Susan, showing the view from Jones Bar and Oak Creek. She reported that the flames were within 100 yards of a home on Jones Bar. The smoke was so thick along Jones Bar that she said, “you can barely see, let alone breathe.” Another person said, “It’s only supposed to be 13 acres but there sure is a LOT of smoke.” 

First Rain Farm claimed the prescribed burn as their own. First Rain Farm was founded in 2012 by Tim Van Wagner. First Rain Farm manages prescribed burns for a profit. 

The services page says, “Fire is a natural part of this place and humans have used fire as a tool to improve land for thousands of years. We apply low-intensity fire to the landscape to reduce fine dead fuel accumulations and to stimulate fire-adapted plant and animal species. We are State Certified in Prescribed Burning (CARx) and our team of experienced practitioners apply fire safely and artfully to the land to achieve fuels reduction and ecological objectives.”

After seeing the deluge of comments on social media, First Rain Farm posted a response on Facebook a little before 10pm: 

“I want to chime in, since it was our burn.” First Rain Farm continued, “My first observation is that a number of voices on here are concerned about their safety, and did not receive any direct communication about the burn. Our intention is never to make people feel unsafe, however, in working in Rx fire, we often see a wide spectrum of responses from the public. One person claps their hands and thanks us, while another yells at us because they think what we are doing is dangerous, and they are concerned. We regularly have to navigate this spectrum of responses and while it is difficult at times, we know that part of our mission must be to also try and educate. 

Notifying the public  about anything is difficult. In this case we have hundreds of homes within a 1/2 mile of the burn site and a door to door approach is not feasible. Instead, we opted for physical signs at four locations surrounding the burn location, an email to the Jones Bar Firewise community email list, having YubaNet post about the burn day of (the earliest they will do it), and submitting to Watch Duty so they can put the Rx burn on their map. When people smell smoke, where do they look these days: YubaNet and Watch Duty.  Could we do more? Probably so, and we will try to develop more avenues in the future, but we did make notifications.”

They continued, “Today we perfectly executed [the] burn and we achieved all of the objectives of the burn,” adding, “That's why CalFire is trying to encourage more burning by moving to a prescription-based permitting system for prescribed fire vs the [traditonal] calendar based system. People living in California need to realize that Rx fire is going to increasingly become part of the regular mix of land management practices, while wildfires continue to rage. This won't happen without smoke, and you won't always know about it in advance, but luckily we have a wealth of information at our fingertips, so use the resources available to you to find out what's going on.  

First Rain Farm announced another Rx burn, which is planned to be on Round Mountain Saturday, May 31, 2025, despite it being a CalFire “no burn day.” They claim the site of the future prescribed burn will be “on a northern slope in heavily shaded forest.”