Mendocino County Fire Safe Council

FIRE FUELS REDUCTION: MCFSC manages grant-funded projects and programs to reduce fuel loads and improve wildfire mitigation in Mendocino County. Using both its own crew and subcontractors, including off-season local firefighters who perform defensible-space clearing in their own areas, this year MCFSC provided free defensible-space clearing at the homes of 159 income-qualified seniors and/or disabled residents, supplied 101 days of free chipping services for neighborhood-level defensible-space improvement (serving roughly 700 residences), conducted 54 free assessments for wildfire-preparedness, and deployed six new emergency water source tanks. MCFSC managed fuel-reduction projects to create safer ingress/egress and shaded fuel breaks in order to slow fires and provide responders safe workspaces, totaling 612 acres on locations including Dos Rios, Elkhorn and Pine Ridge Roads, plus much of Cherry Creek, Greenfield Ranch, Pine Mountain, and Ridgewood. MCFSC's crew partnered with Sherwood Firewise Communities to clear an additional 63.44 acres in Brooktrails. MCFSC also collaborated with numerous other local groups to sponsor or help draft other successful fuel reduction grants such as PG&E funded vegetation management grants for the Albion, Holmes Ranch, Leggett and Westport Fire Safe Councils and CAL FIRE grant applications by the Leggett Fire Protection District and Spy Rock Fire Safe Council. Thanks to a grant from PG&E, MCFSC also added a third Chipper to our fleet that will improve our ability to deliver community chipping services and work projects in future years.

EDUCATION, OUTREACH AND COMMUNITY PARTNERSHIPS: MCFSC conducted outreach and education in support of wildfire preparedness and mitigation through convening and/or attending numerous community meetings, including 92 inter-agency coordination meetings, 47 local neighborhood Fire Safe Council meetings and 27 community events. MCFSC participated in radio interviews, issued print articles, and maintained a resource-rich website, blog and monthly newsletter. There are now over 1,550 subscribers to the newsletter, whose email version was opened 9,608 times this year. Our website has 8,867 users, and this year we recorded 45,471 Facebook hits, and 877 views of how-to videos on home-hardening and defensible-space clearing on the MCFSC YouTube channel. MCFSC provided $118,792 in Micro-Grants to local fire departments and Neighborhood Fire Safe Councils for small but key strategic local preparedness projects. MCFSC continued to partner with other agencies to plan and strategize for wildfire mitigation and preparedness projects. MCFSC hosts regular leadership meetings for its affiliated Neighborhood Fire Safe Councils, which grew last year to 73 countywide. MCFSC also implemented a new school outreach and education program in conjunction with the University of California Hopland Research and Extension Center to provide fire science and wildfire preparedness education to 5th grade through middle school ages. 268 students participated in the project's first year. MCFSC continues to roll out other innovative programs to help county residents learn to survive and thrive in our wildfire-prone environment such as piloting a Women's Chainsaw Workshop. MCFSC also created and distributed 676 reflective address-number signs.