Mendocino County Fire Safe Council

MCFSC manages primarily grant-funded projects and programs to reduce fuel loads and improve wildlfire mitigation in Mendocino County. This included providing free defensible-space clearing at the homes of 81 income-qualified seniors and/or disabled residents (roughly 16 acres), supplying 94 days of free chipping services for neighborhood-level defensible-space improvement (serving over 1,000 residences, generating an estimated 20,000 hours of volunteer assistance, and treating an estimated 250+ acres), conducting 68 free educational home assessments for wildfire-preparedness, creating and distributing 284 reflective address-number signs, and providing road-clearing work along 5.4 miles of key ingress/egress routes. MCFSC also awarded Micro-Grants to local fire departments and Neighborhood Fire Safe Councils for small but strategic local preparedness projects. A grant from the California State Coastal Conservancy funded the purchase a crew truck that will improve the Council's ability to deliver community chipping services and reduce related costs in future years.

MCFSC conducted outreach and education in support of wildfire preparedness and mitigation: by convening and participating in numerous community meetings; organizing and hosting a two-day training by National Fire Protection Association professionals focused on teaching commercial providers about state-of-the-art home-hardening strategies, techniques and products; through multiple live community presentations, booths at countywide events, radio interviews, print articles, its resource-rich website, blogs and monthly newsletters. MCFSC has over 1,400 subscribers to its newsletter, an average of 1,164 website users per month (13,971 total for the year), over 1,000 Facebook followers, and 86 mainly how-to videos on home-hardening and defensible-space clearing on its YouTube channel. The Council also partners on an ongoing basis with other agencies to plan and strategize for wildfire mitigation and preparedness projects, to support their related outreach efforts, and to contract with off-season local firefighters to do defensible-space clearing in their own areas. MCFSC also hosts regular leadership meetings for its affiliated Neighborhood Fire Safe Councils, which grew from 51 to 67 during the year.