Sacramento County park rangers have started using a new enforcement tool to crack down on illegal camping, hoping to prevent grass fires along the American River Parkway.

Starting Thursday, rangers are confiscating barbeques, grills and propane tanks — any incendiary device generating an open flame.

The new ban on burning comes after the Sacramento County Board of Supervisors, led by Supervisor Phil Serna, adopted an urgency ordinance on Tuesday, making it a misdemeanor to generate campfires on the American River Parkway.

The only exceptions are designated picnic areas at county parks. Sgt. A.J. Bennett found his first illegal campfire today within three minutes of beginning his patrol, with KCRA 3 riding along.

Five homeless campers received citations and lost their barbeque grill.

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An online petition to halt an anti-camping ordinance that mostly affects Sacramento city homeless residents had gathered 77 signatures and counting by Sunday evening, four days after its release.

The campaign was launched by the Sacramento Regional Coalition to End Homelessness, which called for an immediate moratorium on the local law until a separate plan to build 1,500 rapid rehousing units for homeless people was completed.

That won’t happen right away. The rehousing units are one component of a downtown housing initiative the Sacramento City Council approved last month. The initiative calls for 10,000 new housing units to be built in the central downtown corridor over the next 10 years. Sixty percent of those would be sold or rented at market rate, 25 percent intended for working class residents and the remaining 15 percent to immediately house those without shelter.

The rabid rehousing strategy has been gaining steam in numerous cities, and employs a housing-first model that connects unsheltered individuals with whatever services they need once they are housed.

In a release announcing the petition drive, the Sacramento Regional Coalition to End Homelessness, or SRCEH, cited two shifts in national policy to make its case for suspending the city’s camping prohibition on non-recreational campers, a.k.a. people with nowhere else to go.

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The recent rash of brush fires raging across the American River Parkway triggered a strong response Thursday from the Sacramento County Board of Supervisors.

The county is spending about $700,000 to tackle the duel problems of illegal camping and homelessness along the parkway, long considered to be Sacramento’s urban jewel.

“To me, given the tinder-dry conditions on the parkway, the fuel loads out there — combined with the ignition sources or illegal camps — it’s a recipe for disaster,” said Phil Serna, chair of the Sacramento County Board of Supervisors.

As KCRA 3 reported, the American River Parkway has been the site of 34 fires since Memorial Day — many of them very near homeless camps.

Serna championed the relief package today that includes $216,850 for three additional park rangers, along with $101,237 for additional patrol resources at the Mather Regional Park/Dry Creek Parkway Patrol. The county will also spend $121,412 for Mather Regional Park Preserve Fencing and $55,000 for a homeless navigator.

“The navigator is the front-line person that brings them in to our system and ultimately into that housing,” said Ryan Loofbourrow, executive director for Sacramento Steps Forward.

The new funding also includes $160,000 for winter sanctuary housing for the homeless — money to help religious organizations find shelter for those in need. But the long-term goal is permanent housing.

“It does in fact keep people off the street and help them start to rebuild their lives,” said Maya Wallace, external affairs director for Sacramento Steps Forward.

On any given night there are between 200 and 300 people illegally camping on the American River Parkway, officials said.

One of them is Angel Tejeda, who is four-months pregnant.

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Thirty-four fires have burned along the American River Parkway in Sacramento County since Memorial Day weekend during a severe statewide drought.

The drought typically prompts public officials to tell California residents to be fire-safe, but many people whose homes are near the parkway say officials should be doing much more to alleviate fire danger here.

“We need to do something differently,” said J.T. Marcell, who lives near downtown Sacramento. “We need to work smarter, not harder.”

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