Homeless advocates say cities, counties should distribute tools to prevent fires in encampments

Last month, a fire originating in a Rancho Cordova encampment burned nearly 600 acres. Fires like this one are often initially started in encampments for survival purposes — like cooking food, providing light or to clear out trash. 

But as reports each year show, these fires often spread beyond the control of the person who started them. In previous years, the Sacramento Metropolitan Fire Department has said firefighters respond to fires connected to homeless encampments daily.

“This story about unhoused folks starting fires sort of comes up every year with a lot of insinuation and blame, but it never gets to root causes,” said Niki Jones, director of the Sacramento Regional Coalition to End Homelessness. “It’s a new story every year, like amnesia.”  

Advocates like Jones say there’s more law enforcement could do to respond to these incidents. Sarah Whipple, a Sacramento-based encampment outreach worker, describes Sacramento’s current approach as prevention through criminalization — meaning, arresting unhoused people for starting fires in unpermitted areas or disbanding encampments altogether. 

But Whipple said this approach has not been successful. 

She added that she’d like to see more efforts by cities and counties to equip unhoused people with tools to tackle the issue. She sees not offering these resources as a missed opportunity for fire prevention.

“Unhoused people are really the first responders in these fires and if we give them the resources and tools they can and very much want to prevent these fires from doing damage and extensive harm,” Whipple said. 

Whipple started passing out fire extinguishers and other preventative tools to unhoused people in 2021. The effort began at the request of unhoused people she talked to and expanded after she received grant funding a year later. 

“I started looking into, you know, surely the city or the fire department would have … some fire safety recommendations for camps, some resources for camps, but it really wasn't the case at all,” Whipple said. “I mean, nobody did.”

She said many of the unhoused people she’s spoken to are eager for tools like fire extinguishers or even shovels, which can be used to pile dirt onto a fire.   

“There's a lot of drive and motivation on behalf of encampments to reduce their fire risk,” Whipple said. “The people who lose the most when there's an uncontrolled fire in a camp [are] the people who live there and who lose everything that they own, and then face criminalization after that.” 

Efforts to pass out tools to respond to fires in encampments have gained some traction in recent years. Derrick Soo, an Oakland-based homeless advocate, said he asked for fire extinguishers at the encampment he once lived in during the eight years that he was homeless. He says his encampment began receiving fire extinguishers back in 2016, and saw the spread of far fewer fires as a result.

Soo said that fires at the encampment he lived at were sometimes set during conflicts between residents. Another common cause were candles, which some residents would use as a source of light.

“The sad part is people fall asleep and the candles either burn down and then set the whole place on fire because the wax melts and spreads, or they tip it over,” he said.  

He said the fire extinguishers were popular quickly after they began to be distributed. It helped quench fires but also was used for other purposes, like as a self defense tool. 

“We were going through, at one point, sixty fire extinguishers a month,” Soo said. 

Jones said law enforcement’s current approach in Sacramento County often unintentionally pushes unhoused people towards unsafe ways of using fire. 

“I have watched them confiscate hundreds and hundreds of barbecue pits, propane grills,” Jones said. “They criminalize that survival mechanism and then people are forced to the less safe mechanism of starting fires.” 

In Sacramento County parks, those found igniting any kind of fire — including barbecue and cooking fires if not in designated areas — are subject to fines or jail time, if found guilty, according to park ordinances.

Ultimately, Jones said housing is the solution for preventing these fires. But she said more immediate solutions could include providing unhoused people with tools like fire extinguishers and letting them keep tools that allow them to cook food more safely.