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Mill Valley residents who live in the forested canyons below Blithedale Ridge said they were not looped in last month as crews fought a fire near their homes, leaving them anxious.

“The plane came over my house, rattled the windows with fire retardant,” said Paula Vlamings at a community meeting on Aug. 19. “I saw the helicopters dropping the water. I can see from my balcony four, five, six, seven, eight, 10 trucks coming up the hill and still we had no information.”

“When you have a fire that close and you’re running around your house gathering all your belongings to get out and there’s no information from the city … we knew nothing,” she said.

“I respect that. We’re evaluating,” Southern Marin Fire Protection District Battalion Chief Jon Butler said. “We hear the community’s concerns 100%.”

The exchange came during meeting attended by 50 residents to discuss the fire on July 27. Fire and police officials recounted how they learned about the blaze and subdued it. They also reiterated how police and fire agencies coordinate, including when they sent out alerts and stay-home orders, and when they call for evacuations.

Vlamings was among a half-dozen residents who praised the firefighting effort but said they wanted timely updates to quell their panic.

One resident suggested using “old school” megaphones on police cars and fire engines “because we can hear everything in the canyon that just says ‘we got this.’”

According to the fire district, the 1.5-acre fire started around 4:42 p.m. in the steep terrain between Hillside Avenue and Blithedale Ridge.

The first 911 calls came from the valley west of the fire, not nearby and below it, and reported a smoke column. Fire and police crews raced to pinpoint its location and track its spread, including using drones. By 6:10 p.m., its progress was stopped. No homes were damaged or injuries reported. Crews remained for 24 hours to monitor the site.

Mill Valley police Sgt. Ryan Smith said the role of police is to support fire crews on the ground and assist incident managers like Butler as the response evolves.

“Like the fire department, our job is to locate the source of the fire, and that did take some time,” he said. “One of our officers had fire retardant dropped on him too because he was on the scene of the fire, trying to assist with getting information out.”

“Our job is to link up with them and ask what they need us to do,” he said. “And at that point, we’re just closing roads and making sure they could get their apparatus in and their apparatus out.”

Southern Marin Fire Marshal Fred Hilliard said the city’s efforts to trim vegetation along its narrow two-lane roads and clear high-elevation fire breaks helped contain the fire.

The county was investigating what caused it, he said. Investigators have reports of teens who party on the hill and light fireworks.

The officials said the text-based tiered warning system, AlertMarin, is intended to tell people to pay attention or act in emergencies.

It sends out warnings, shelter-in-place instructions or evacuation orders, not updates about the fire’s progression or containment.

Tom Welch, Mill Valley’s former fire chief and a deputy chief with the Southern Marin district, said AlertMarin can be micro-targeted to neighborhoods.

In contrast, Nixle alerts contain more general public safety updates for weather, criminal activities, traffic and missing persons, he said.

Residents also were concerned about evacuating and avoiding creating traffic that impaired the fire crews.

If an evacuation were ordered, Smith said police would have driven through the hillside and used “high-low” sirens to roust residents.

“My last comment on this is just a request from all of the neighbors on Greenwood that the city explore more information for those of us on that hill,” Vlamings said.

“It was a brilliant effort and it was put down so quickly,” she said. “But if those circumstances were different, we feel that we’re really on the wrong foot about getting out of there.”