The following is a letter to the editor, published here as opinion. The opinions expressed in this letter are those of the writer. If you would like to submit a letter to the editor feel free to write to [email protected].
Editor’s note: The following is a letter from Ben O’Neill. We encourage everyone who has suffered damages from the recent storms to fill out the Mendocino County disaster survey: The survey can be found here.
We haven’t met, but I’m the operations Chief at Bell Springs Fire Department. My brother is Casey O’Neill at HappyDay Farms.
I’m currently engaged in disaster supplies for the Bell Springs, Spy Rock and some southern Leggett families. The Community Foundation of Mendocino County donated 5,000.00 to purchase food, pet food and livestock feed for impacted families in our area on Monday. I’ve been purchasing and shuttling supplies up to the Bell Springs Fire dept at Blue Rock Ranch on Bell Springs.
There’s an extremely important Mendocino County Survey that takes 5 minutes to fill out. It is the determining factor for us to get FEMA aid. It’s all about number of people impacted, so we need as many people to fill it out as possible.
Additionally, I’ve included pictures of the supplies and volunteers with snow mobiles distributing. The county has plowed the road, but every person who lives up here is still snowed in on the their driveways that can be up to 5 miles long (thus the snow mobile missions).
A huge thank you to the county plow team. We had 5 feet of snow at Blue Rock, and 8 feet at our highest crest on the Bell. We plowed through a 14 foot drift to get feed to starving horses 2 days ago. Frank Barret Thomas has been volunteering his time and fuel to plow neighbor’s driveways and has blown through 700 gallons of diesel in the past 2 weeks.
Gratefully,
Ben O’Neill
Bell Springs Fire
