COMMENTARY: Why is Kern County allowing a public safety hazard to remain in Lebec?

  • [Photo by Carlos Serret]

    [Photo by Carlos Serret]

By Gary Meyer, TME

It has been three and a half years since Kern County Fire Marshal’s office wrote a memo warning Lebec Road property owners Bruce and Ines Fuller that they must remove large boulders that had been placed and were obstructing the bottom of Ridge Route Drive.

The September 13, 2018 memo stated, “…the existing road is considered a legal easement and must be cleared immediately.”

While much legal wrangling has resulted from the placement of the boulders, allegedly by Davin Cano who lives at the Fullers’ property, one fact remains: Lives are in danger and no amount of legal clarity would bring back any lives lost should the unthinkable happen due to an obstructed roadway.

The Mountain Enterprise has asked Kern County Fire Department several times to explain why it has continued to allow the obstruction of a legal roadway, forcing emergency personnel to use a makeshift dirt path that Mr. Cano allegedly plowed up a hillside on someone else’s private property with his own tractor, without permits.

Why Worry?

The lives at risk are not limited to those of Kern County firefighters. There are five homes above the road obstruction.

There are ambulance personnel, unknown numbers of delivery and utility company drivers, and private contractors who maintain the communication towers on the hilltops—all being forced to reach Ridge Route Drive from a dangerous, illegal dirt path.

For three and a half years, all vehicles larger than a pickup truck have been blocked from using the legal roadway because of boulders illegally placed and allowed by Kern County Fire Department to remain there.

On August 28, last year, a wildfire erupted at the bottom of the hill along Lebec Road.

The fire raced uphill, aiming at Ridge Route Drive.

Kern County Fire department Engine 56 was forced to…(please see below to view full stories and photographs)

Photo captions:

This Kern County fire engine had to climb a dirt hill to get around an obstruction in the legal roadway before reaching this wildfire.

Kern County Map and Survey Engineering Technician Jeremy Brock with crew members, doing survey work at Ridge Route Drive above Lebec Road on February 25, 2022. Who has the right to block Ridge Route Drive?

The entrance to Ridge Route Drive at Lebec Road, illegally blocked with boulders allegedly placed there by area resident Davin Cano. After another resident, Daniel Gilbert Tarr, moved the boulders in December of 2020, so he could drive his truck to his home, he was arrested by Kern County Sheriff’s deputies for Grand Theft and Resisting Arrest. Tarr and his neighbors claim that Cano created the blockage to stop property owners and their visitors from using Ridge Route Drive. Cano has not returned phone calls from The Mountain Enterprise.

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This is part of the April 8, 2022 online edition of The Mountain Enterprise.

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