This is the next installment of an exciting new series of podcasts and companion articles we are collaborating on with journalist Sarah Reith. You can listen to her podcast by hitting the play button below, or read the abbreviated version of the story below.

The Mendocino County Fire Safe Council website has gotten a major renovation, thanks to Torrey Douglass of Lemon Fresh Design in Boonville. As a professional editor and graphic designer, Torrey knows when to cut and how to organize. “The Fire Safe Council does an awful lot of stuff,” she observed, reflecting on the copious amount of material that has found its way onto the vast online archive in the MCFSC website. But, she conceded, “The website had become a little bloated and disorganized as more and more things were added.”

So she took an inventory of the material: what to keep, cut or update. One thing that became clear is that the Fire Safe Council has an appetite for science and policy that is not entirely universal. “A lot of the people involved are scientists or academics, and they use lots of words,” Torrey noted. “And then I come in with my machete, and I’m like, let’s use six instead of twenty.” It can make the difference between visitors deciding to avail themselves of a Micro-Grant for a community project, or getting bogged down in the policy and scientific details that are only delicious to a minority of people. “The words pack more punch when you use fewer of them,” she concluded.

Like any defensible-space project, clearing the overgrowth created visibility and eased navigation. The new website features three categories, right at the top: Get Ready. Get Help. Get Informed.

Under Get Ready, visitors can select from a variety of resources to make their homes and neighborhoods as defensible as possible. They can watch videos about home-hardening, learn how their neighborhood can become a Firewise community, or order a reflective sign so firefighters can find them in the dark. The Get Help tab offers information about free Home Assessments, financial assistance for defensible space work, Micro-Grants, or Community Work Parties – where the Fire Safe Council’s work crew will come out and help neighbors with fuel-reduction efforts. Under Get Informed, visitors can get links to current emergency information, learn what plants to protect or remove, browse the county’s Community Wildfire Protection Plan, or peruse the newsletter archive.

Torrey has also implemented Search Engine Optimization (SEO) to make the site as user-friendly as possible. “People aren’t in a quiet library with an hour of free time and no other worries on their mind, absorbing your content,” she pointed out, invoking a typical user who may be trying to find information while working, cooking, or soothing a child.

The site also makes use of already existing information from government agencies. In the top right corner, users can link to CAL FIRE to find out about current incidents, or to AirNow, an air-quality index from the Environmental Protection Agency and U.S Forest Service. It’s all part of the effort to make crucial information more accessible.

Torrey thinks the website and the newsletter are an ideal combination for people who want to stay up to date on how to adapt to wildfire. “This is a very active organization that is constantly looking for new ways to help make our county more fire-safe,” she said.

To stay informed about opportunities to get help with labor-intensive safety work, to explore or download maps, or discover what’s going on in a neighborhood near you, she advises, “Signing up for the newsletter would be a great way to stay in touch with what this organization is doing, because there’s always new stuff happening, and it can directly benefit the people who live here.”

For more information, please check out our new website at firesafemendocino.org.