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Mendocino County Fire Safe Council, Inc
The Mendocino County Fire Safe Council, Inc., is a nonprofit
partnership of persons seeking to "help save lives, property, and resources
from devastation by wildland fires."
Wildfire is a natural part of our county's history. In past centuries, fires ignited by lightning, Native Americans, and ranchers periodically burned lightly and quickly through our wildlands, clearing out dense brush and reducing the overall vegetation. Such fires rarely devastated the landscape, because they burned frequently and with much less intensity than we see today.
In the 20th and 21st centuries, thousands of people have moved into areas where these fires once burned, and homes now dot fire-prone landscapes. Because of these homes, wildland fires have been fought aggressively and natural fires are rarely allowed. As a result, vegetation continues to become older and denser, and the danger of large, destructive fires continues to increase.
The Fire Safe Council does not seek to prevent all fires in wildland areas. Instead, it seeks to help persons in wildland areas to prepare to survive the wildfires which are inevitable.
The values at stake are the lives of residents and firefighters, plus animals, homes, and natural resources. Through careful preparation, these losses can be prevented or reduced.
The Mendocino County Fire Safe Council helps this preparation primarily by (1) educating residents about the danger of wildfire and how they can save their lives and property when one occurs; (2) mapping and planning in local areas to prepare for wildfire situations; and
(3) obtaining grant funding to help residents make the necessary changes.
To more effectively accomplish these goals, the county Council encourages road associations, homeowner groups, subdivisions, and towns to create their own Fire Safe Councils. The county Council assists these Councils with education, guidance, and possible grant funding. Several local Fire Safe Councils throughout Mendocino County are now assessing their needs and working on projects to improve their areas' preparedness, including Brooktrails, Caspar, Pine Mountain (Willits), and Deerwood, Oak Knoll, and Robinson Creek (Ukiah area).
Since its founding in 2004, the Council has brought a total of $441,000 of federal grants, primarily from the Bureau of Land Management, into Mendocino County for education, vegetation removal, emergency response mapping, road signs, and evacuation route clearance; another $207,000 has been awarded for 2009. It has also gained $85,000 of local grants, most of it from the Allen-Heath Memorial Foundation, for its outreach and wildfire planning efforts. These include the Mendocino County Community Wildfire Protection Plan, which it created in 2005 in conjunction with CDF (now called Cal Fire) and local fire personnel and residents.
The Mendocino County Fire Safe Council encourages all interested persons to become Members of the Council (dues are $30/year or $50 for two years) and to participate in its work!
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