Article by Sarah Reith

Last fall, neighbors working with the Mendocino County Fire Safe Council pitched in to help a landowner maintain a strategic fuel break that did exactly what it was supposed to do – provide an opportunity to safely stop a wildfire from getting into the larger community.

The five-acre Ridge Fire broke out at the top of Pine Mountain, eight miles outside of Willits, on the afternoon of May 6. No structures were damaged, and no injuries were reported, though the fire expanded rapidly and the whole incident was a close call. It didn’t get widespread attention precisely because, thanks to that fire break, it was not much of an event.

That’s exactly what the Fire Safe Council strives for: creating conditions where newsworthy events are not fire-related.

That wasn’t the case in 2017, when the Redwood Complex Fire was visible from the Pine Mountain ridgeline. Tom Varney was among the residents who fled before wind-driven flames. When he got back, he saw that CAL FIRE had cut a line through the forest bordering the meadow behind his house, down a steep hillside almost to the Willits end of Tomki Road. That work was part of a 500 acre-plus CAL FIRE treatment.

At the time, he was not pleased. The firefighters’ bulldozers had pushed down hundreds of trees, which then had to be cleaned up. Still, he explained, “The fire wasn’t close in 2017, several miles away, but this was the most strategic place we could try to do an auxiliary fire break if the wind had shifted and the fire started coming north. This would have been our place where we would have made a stand to try to keep it from heading down into Willits.” Over the next seven years, he picked away at the mountain of foliage.

On September 20 of 2024, a Mendocino County Fire Safe Council work party brought neighbors from all over the area to give the effort another big push before fire season began. The work parties are a Measure P-funded program that allows the Fire Safe Council to augment volunteer efforts with a five-person paid work crew, chipper, and tools, all at no direct cost to the beneficiaries. Fire Safe Council employees also help to organize the event and offer tips about how to promote fire safety. An important feature of the community work parties is that their location is determined using very local knowledge of what the greatest risks to the community are. They can focus on vulnerabilities that large-scale projects might miss.

The day of the work party at Varney’s homestead, Angie Herman extolled the work her neighbor had done to maintain fire resiliency on his property. “It’s amazing, how much work he has done,” she said, pausing from her uphill climb with the chainsaw she had been using to limb up the trees. “We really want to support that. And the fact that this was a fire break, we may as well maintain it. It’s here already. So that’s kind of what we’re doing. We’re cleaning up what’s grown back, and what he couldn’t get to.” She was convinced that the effort would also benefit the rest of the community. “It definitely helps,” she declared. “Anywhere we can get a break in the vegetation. It all helps. It’ll slow things down, it’ll provide access. I’d like to see a few more of these.” CAL FIRE agrees. Shane Lamkin, CAL FIRE Mendocino Unit Public Information Officer, relayed that the maintenance and regular vegetation removal on the site, the kind of work they would like to see landowners performing regularly, created a safe space for their crew to work from and contain the fire.

When the Ridge Fire broke out on May 6, it moved fast. Varney was outside getting some work done in the early afternoon when he saw flames moving across the green grass on the slope. “I was down there trying to put it out with a shovel,” he recalled. It was “very smoky, and very traumatic. I was working on it for a while, and it started getting hot on my foot. I looked down, and saw my pant leg was on fire. That kind of freaked me out a little bit,” he acknowledged. He extinguished himself and went back to work. When the fire started heading for much drier grass, he called the fire department, and got three: the Little Lake Fire Protection District, the Brooktrails Fire Department, and CAL FIRE, which stopped the fire at five acres in under an hour.

“If it had jumped the area where we did the Fire Safe Council cleanup and that fire break, it would have gone down the hill, and I don’t think they would have put it out for hours,” said Randy McDonald, another neighbor who is always fire ready. While Varney was fighting the flames in the grassland, McDonald was dousing them closer to the house, with water from his 400-gallon water tank. “I need a bigger one,” he laughed. He mostly uses it to keep the dust down on the roads, but he’s deployed it three times now on a fire. “I did put all the attachments on it,” he said, including a 400-foot hose and all the nozzles. He also installed a mechanism to fill it quickly at his house. “It’s been a lifesaver,” he added.

Varney believes that without the fire break, the flames could have easily torn into the woods, where the terrain is not easily accessible and landowners have installed locked gates across narrow, treacherous roads. He says the early-season fire made him realize how much of a help the neighborhood work party was, both in helping with physical safety and creating a sense of community. “One person came all the way from Brooktrails,” he reported. “I was amazed that I met some people I didn’t even know, and they were willing to go to someone’s property and help with the fire defense…People who realized, we’re all in the same boat.”

McDonald commended his neighbor, saying, “This guy takes great care of his property.” But as the wind picked up and pushed embering tanoak leaves ahead of the main fire, he thought back to 2017. It was a time before well-organized work parties with organizational backing had become as fashionable as they are today, when things got out of hand with disastrous results. “When you’ve got fire and you’ve got wind, you’ve got troubles,” he said. “They all start small, and then they get bigger.”Last fall, neighbors working with the Mendocino County Fire Safe Council pitched in to help a landowner maintain a strategic fuel break that did exactly what it was supposed to do – provide an opportunity to safely stop a wildfire from getting into the larger community.

The five-acre Ridge Fire broke out at the top of Pine Mountain, eight miles outside of Willits, on the afternoon of May 6. No structures were damaged, and no injuries were reported, though the fire expanded rapidly and the whole incident was a close call. It didn’t get widespread attention precisely because, thanks to that fire break, it was not much of an event.

That’s exactly what the Fire Safe Council strives for: creating conditions where newsworthy events are not fire-related.

That wasn’t the case in 2017, when the Redwood Complex Fire was visible from the Pine Mountain ridgeline. Tom Varney was among the residents who fled before wind-driven flames. When he got back, he saw that CAL FIRE had cut a line through the forest bordering the meadow behind his house, down a steep hillside almost to the Willits end of Tomki Road. That work was part of a 500 acre-plus CAL FIRE treatment.

At the time, he was not pleased. The firefighters’ bulldozers had pushed down hundreds of trees, which then had to be cleaned up. Still, he explained, “The fire wasn’t close in 2017, several miles away, but this was the most strategic place we could try to do an auxiliary fire break if the wind had shifted and the fire started coming north. This would have been our place where we would have made a stand to try to keep it from heading down into Willits.” Over the next seven years, he picked away at the mountain of foliage.

On September 20 of 2024, a Mendocino County Fire Safe Council work party brought neighbors from all over the area to give the effort another big push before fire season began. The work parties are a Measure P-funded program that allows the Fire Safe Council to augment volunteer efforts with a five-person paid work crew, chipper, and tools, all at no direct cost to the beneficiaries. Fire Safe Council employees also help to organize the event and offer tips about how to promote fire safety. An important feature of the community work parties is that their location is determined using very local knowledge of what the greatest risks to the community are. They can focus on vulnerabilities that large-scale projects might miss.

The day of the work party at Varney’s homestead, Angie Herman extolled the work her neighbor had done to maintain fire resiliency on his property. “It’s amazing, how much work he has done,” she said, pausing from her uphill climb with the chainsaw she had been using to limb up the trees. “We really want to support that. And the fact that this was a fire break, we may as well maintain it. It’s here already. So that’s kind of what we’re doing. We’re cleaning up what’s grown back, and what he couldn’t get to.” She was convinced that the effort would also benefit the rest of the community. “It definitely helps,” she declared. “Anywhere we can get a break in the vegetation. It all helps. It’ll slow things down, it’ll provide access. I’d like to see a few more of these.” CAL FIRE agrees. Shane Lamkin, CAL FIRE Mendocino Unit Public Information Officer, relayed that the maintenance and regular vegetation removal on the site, the kind of work they would like to see landowners performing regularly, created a safe space for their crew to work from and contain the fire.

When the Ridge Fire broke out on May 6, it moved fast. Varney was outside getting some work done in the early afternoon when he saw flames moving across the green grass on the slope. “I was down there trying to put it out with a shovel,” he recalled. It was “very smoky, and very traumatic. I was working on it for a while, and it started getting hot on my foot. I looked down, and saw my pant leg was on fire. That kind of freaked me out a little bit,” he acknowledged. He extinguished himself and went back to work. When the fire started heading for much drier grass, he called the fire department, and got three: the Little Lake Fire Protection District, the Brooktrails Fire Department, and CAL FIRE, which stopped the fire at five acres in under an hour.

“If it had jumped the area where we did the Fire Safe Council cleanup and that fire break, it would have gone down the hill, and I don’t think they would have put it out for hours,” said Randy McDonald, another neighbor who is always fire ready. While Varney was fighting the flames in the grassland, McDonald was dousing them closer to the house, with water from his 400-gallon water tank. “I need a bigger one,” he laughed. He mostly uses it to keep the dust down on the roads, but he’s deployed it three times now on a fire. “I did put all the attachments on it,” he said, including a 400-foot hose and all the nozzles. He also installed a mechanism to fill it quickly at his house. “It’s been a lifesaver,” he added.

Varney believes that without the fire break, the flames could have easily torn into the woods, where the terrain is not easily accessible and landowners have installed locked gates across narrow, treacherous roads. He says the early-season fire made him realize how much of a help the neighborhood work party was, both in helping with physical safety and creating a sense of community. “One person came all the way from Brooktrails,” he reported. “I was amazed that I met some people I didn’t even know, and they were willing to go to someone’s property and help with the fire defense…People who realized, we’re all in the same boat.”

McDonald commended his neighbor, saying, “This guy takes great care of his property.” But as the wind picked up and pushed embering tanoak leaves ahead of the main fire, he thought back to 2017. It was a time before well-organized work parties with organizational backing had become as fashionable as they are today, when things got out of hand with disastrous results. “When you’ve got fire and you’ve got wind, you’ve got troubles,” he said. “They all start small, and then they get bigger.”