MENDOCINO CO., 3/31/25 – Late one night in June 2020, the house next door to Joanne Moore caught on fire. Moore lives in String Creek, a small settlement of about 70 people, northeast of Willits. The few dozen homes often lie at the ends of long, steep, narrow driveways; most of their occupants are no longer young.
“We were very, very lucky,” Moore recalled. “It could have been the beginning of a terrible fire” if it had spread to other homes or engulfed the road that’s the only access in or out of the neighborhood. After it was over, Moore began to think about how to make sure the next fire didn’t devastate her community.
She realized that it was nearly impossible for emergency responders to find people’s houses due to the lack of signs. “We’ve gotta grow up,” she thought. “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 the String Creek residents formed a neighborhood Fire Safe Council as an adjunct to their road association.
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 pbecoming designated as a Firewise USA Community by the National Fire Protection Association.
Determining action plans with neighbors creates community
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 the group took their first steps toward becoming the county’s 14th Firewise Community. (Less than a year ago, there were only four Firewise Communities in Mendocino County!)
Firewise Communities write up risk assessments and action plans—and most importantly, act on them. These groups also have access to the latest scientific findings such as how to prevent ember ignition of homes. The possibility of getting grants for wildfire-safety projects in the neighborhood is increased. 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, things many neighborhoods are already doing. To get started, a board or committee of volunteers needs to work with a qualified organization (such as the Mendocino County Fire Safe Council) to conduct a neighborhood risk assessment and prepare a three-year action plan.
Then the group collectively gets to work on the action plan to address the risks, such as clearing access roads, removing hazardous trees, or doing home-hardening and defensible space around homes—each of which has an impact on the overall safety of the neighborhood. The group keeps 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.
“We’ve accomplished quite a few things,” said 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 the String Creek group is ready to do more.
“A lot of people around here don’t know where to begin,” Stephens 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 those steep driveways, which, Moore noted, “contribute to how difficult it is to be fire-safe.”
Identifying the risks is an education in itself
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.
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, the group is pleased with its initial foray into heightening the safety of their neighborhood. “I feel really happy that our community is mobilizing in this way,” concluded 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.