String Creek Explores How to Graduate from Fire Safe to Firewise — and Why

Spring is short, and fire season is long, in the highly combustible landscape of rural Mendocino County. Neighborhood Fire Safe Councils are a great way to prevent disaster by sharing information and resources, organizing workdays, and providing many other ways to help homes withstand wildfire. Communities can take their efforts even further - and receive substantial benefits - by becoming designated as Firewise USA® Communities by the National Fire Protection Association.

Firewise Communities are safer because they write up Risk Assessments and Action Plans, and then act on them. They also have access to the latest scientific findings such as preventing ember ignition of homes, and they increase their chances of getting grants for wildfire-safety projects. Significantly, as home-insurance costs skyrocket, recent State “Safer from Wildfires” regulations require insurance companies to offer discounts on premiums to homeowners in Firewise Communities.

After some initial work, the Firewise commitment is not much more than organizing workdays and contact trees, which your neighborhood may already be doing. A board or committee of volunteers (such as a Neighborhood Fire Safe Council) needs to work with a qualified organization (such as the Mendocino County Fire Safe Council) to conduct a neighborhood Risk Assessment and prepare a 3-year Action Plan.

Then you collectively get to work on your Action Plan to address the risks you’ve identified, for instance clearing access roads, removing hazard trees, or doing home-hardening and defensible space around homes - all of which have an impact on the overall safety of the neighborhood. And you need to keep track of volunteer hours and money spent on wildfire-safety equipment or improvements. 

The Mendocino County Fire Safe Council (MCFSC) is happy to help communities advance to Firewise status, and can provide free hands-on guidance and tools to simplify the process. 

One sunny Saturday afternoon in early March, Mendocino County Fire Safe Council Executive Director Scott Cratty and Community Outreach Coordinator Eva King joined the String Creek/Tartar Canyon Fire Safe Council (ST/TC FSC) as they took their first steps toward becoming the county’s 14th Firewise Community. (Less than a year ago, there were only 4 Firewise Communities in Mendocino County!)

String Creek is a small settlement of about 70 people, northeast of Willits, including a few dozen homes, often at the end of a long, steep, narrow driveway, and mostly occupied by one or two people who are no longer young.

For Joanne Moore, a founding member of ST/TC FSC, the moment of reckoning came late one night in June 2020, when her neighbor’s house caught on fire. “We were very, very lucky,” she recalled. “It could have been the beginning of a terrible fire” if it had spread to other homes or engulfed the road, which is the only access in or out of the neighborhood. After it was over, she began to think about how to make sure the next fire didn’t devastate her community either. 

For one thing, it was difficult for emergency responders to find people’s houses due to a lack of signage. “We’ve gotta grow up,” she realized. “We have to get road signs.” That led to a decision to buy low-cost reflective address signs from the Mendocino County Fire Safe Council. One thing led to another, and soon a Neighborhood Fire Safe Council grew out of their local road association. 

“We’ve accomplished quite a few things,” added Windy Stephens, a ST/TC FSC member who has lived all her life in the house that her father built on String Creek. The group has gotten  grants (including MCFSC’s annual Micro-Grants) for water storage and fuel-reduction projects along the road, as well as in a large, centrally located meadow. The meadow is an ideal spot for picnics, bocce ball, and sheltering in place if it ever becomes impossible to flee the area. But now they’re ready to do more.

“A lot of people around here don’t know where to begin,” Windy acknowledged. “There’s so much to do,” from installing 1/8-inch mesh on all their vents, building skirting around their decks, and keeping roofs free of debris. “A lot of folks around here are low-income. They don’t have that much money to put into their homes. This is a good time for us to educate them about resources that are available to us.” 

Those resources include MCFSC’s DSAFIE (Defensible Space Assistance for Income Eligible seniors and people with disabilities) program, which provides fuel-reduction work at no cost. The work is done around the home and main access routes including some of their steep driveways, which, Joanne noted, “contribute to how difficult it is to be fire-safe.”

The community Risk Assessment, which is the first step toward drafting a Firewise Action Plan, includes assessing a sample of homes for safety features such as non-combustible building materials, deck skirting, and fire-resistant landscaping within 100 feet of any structure. To be Firewise, communities need to make a plan that addresses the main shortfalls, and then make demonstrable progress each year toward increasing their neighborhood safety.

Joanne Moore feels she benefited from SC/TC FSC’s community assessment. “There is a lot to learn, and it’s actually interesting,” she reflected, especially about the silent devastation of tiny embers, which can slip in through vents or kindle a full-scale blaze in debris-littered roof corners. “It’s all about how those embers get in there,” she realized.

The community will probably start small, with educational campaigns, strategic placement and protection of outbuildings, and maybe incorporating grazing into their fuel management. Coming up with an effective means of communicating during a disaster, and creating a map of water resources and high-risk areas for firefighters, are a few other priorities that will be organized in order of importance and feasibility.

Overall, they were pleased with their initial foray into heightening the safety of their neighborhood. “I feel really happy that our community is mobilizing in this way,” concluded Windy Stephens. “We have fun at our meetings, and we’re productive. I feel really proud of the work that we’ve done, and I love our little community up here on String Creek. We work really well together. We all really care about each other, and we care about making this place better because we all love living out here and we don’t want to live anywhere else.”

For more information on creating a Firewise Community, visit MCFSC’s webpage at https://www.firesafemendocino.org/firewise-usa. If you are a low-income senior or person with disabilities, free DSAFIE assistance information is available at https://www.firesafemendocino.org/defensible-space-assistance-program.