Welcome to the Mendocino County Fire Safe Council’s (MCFSC) Community “Chipper Day” Program!

This program is designed to assist neighborhoods in creating and maintaining defensible space around their homes as well as creating and maintaining roadside ingress and egress in their neighborhoods. Through individual action and community work parties you can make your neighborhood and home safer in the event of a wildfire. How it works: schedule a chipper day as a neighborhood or join our waitlist as an individual, build MCFSC compliant chipper pile, and MCFSC will coordinate a chipper crew to come chip the piles FOR FREE!

2023 funding for this program is provided by the State Coastal Conservancy.

There are two options for organizing a Community Chipper Day. Please read all the instructions before contacting MCFSC or signing up. 

Please DO NOT make any piles before you have a confirmed reservation.

NOTE:  Hauling chips off-site is usually not possible. We may only be able to provide service if we can broadcast or pile chips at your location or at a prearranged nearby location.  Please note if you will not be able to accept chips on site when you sign up.

Thanks to funding from Mendocino County, MCFSC is now scheduling chipper days for 2022.

Check out this Chipper Day Orientation Video produced by one of our project partners, Family Tree Resource, for more information:

What Makes a Good Chipper Pile?

If you have a Community Chipper Day scheduled for your area, you must read this document for detailed requirements for your chipper pile.

General Chipper Piles Guidlines:

• brush must be clean of metal, rock, or other debris that may damage equipment or pose a risk to operators (bulldozed or machine stacked piles cannot be processed);
• individual piles should be no larger than one large pickup-truckload in size and no taller than 5′;
• no material should be longer than 10 feet long or 6 inches in diameter;
• each location is allowed 5 piles maximum;
• piles should not include any roots or stumps, poison oak, oleander, vines, spiny plants, roses, blackberry, bamboo, broom, gorse (or other known invasive species),  rakings or piles of needles, leaves or grass, construction type wood or fence posts;
• all piles must be in locations readily accessible for a large chipper truck towing a chipper (ie. piles should be near the road or drive, and not on a steep slope);
• cut ends should face in the same direction, toward the road;
• if possible, brush-cutting should occur within a few days of Chipper Days, for easier chipping and reduced fire risk from piles sitting out on roadsides;
• crews should never be interrupted or distracted while working.

If your pile does not comply with the above guidelines it will not be chipped and you will be responsible for disposing of the unchipped material.

The following NFSC Starting May 2023 will have regular chipper days. Must be registered, each area has a minimum of 5 properties and 10 piles minimum.

Thanks for helping make Community Chipper Days possible and Mendocino County a safer place to live.