UKIAH, CA., 5/13/25 — Confused about home-hardening and vegetation management? Concerned about insurance cancellations? A town hall Monday at Mendocino College in Ukiah will address how to stay fire-safe in Mendocino County’s changing climate. Topics include the science of home-hardening and prescribed burns to regulatory changes.
“This town hall is based on the most up-to-date information, post-LA fires,” said 1st District Supervisor Madeline Cline, who will kick off the meeting and introduce the speakers. The goal, she said, “is to start on the home end. We’ll be discussing what each of us can do in our homes, and then moving out to what we can do at a neighborhood level, a community level, and then some of the things that are happening region-wide.”
Michael Jones, University of California Cooperative Forest Advisor for Mendocino, Lake and Sonoma counties, will talk about using prescribed burns as a stewardship tool. Jones has been conducting experiments with prescribed burns in the Jackson Demonstration State Forest, which is mostly a redwood landscape. Fire, he contends, is a vital part of California’s ecosystem, and it is well past time to reintroduce it as a management strategy.
Brandon Gunn, Cal Fire’s Mendocino unit chief, will update attendees on his work in the county and unit plans as summer approaches. Scott Cratty, executive director of the Mendocino County Fire Safe Council, will share information about how neighborhoods can work together to promote fire resistance.
Yana Valachovic, the forest advisor for Humboldt and Del Norte counties, works with the UC Fire Network on making people’s homes less flammable. She visited Los Angeles post-fire, where she saw that fire will burn in any type of vegetation, including carefully curated landscapes in urban areas. “So much of our orientation is around fire in forests, and that it’s forest fire that’s going to impact our communities,” she reflected. “The challenge is, how do we keep it out of our communities?”
Embers around homes spark disaster
Much of the answer, Valachovic said, is reducing opportunities for wind-driven embers to do damage. These embers, she said, “can find all the little weaknesses in our buildings. They come in through the cat and dog doors. They come in by the open skylight, the garage door that doesn’t seal very well. They penetrate our vents. They land in the debris that collects at the bases of our walls, and the woody vegetation and the wood mulch that we have within the first five feet of our houses.”
She pointed out that once you get ignition adjacent to your home, then fire “finds a way into that building, which is so perfectly cured and ready to burn.” The radiant heat from the burning home then finds its way into the neighbor’s houses or outbuildings. More embers are created by the burning buildings, which creates what Valachovic calls “a contagion effect.”
A wooden fence, too, can act as a fuse, leading directly to a structure. A metal gate or panel between the building and the fence can disconnect the flame’s pathway. Another major fire-resistant component of any home is a good roof, which is a high-dollar improvement. But ember-resistant vents, with eighth-inch or smaller mesh, can be a DIY project for any enterprising homeowner with a pair of good shears and a roll of mesh from the hardware store. Valachovic said the standard mesh (quarter-inch) keeps out rodents, but it leaves plenty of space for an ember to slip into a home and become a fire. “A pair of metal shears and a staple gun can do a tremendous amount of good,” she advised.
And while she’s asking people to install those screens, she’s not merciful about beloved flowering plants nestled up against the house. “Responding to this moment, in my mind, means you can’t do business as usual anymore,” she said. “What we’ve been doing isn’t producing a different outcome… Fire adaptation takes adaptation,” which means getting serious about home-hardening and defensible space.
Insurance companies can use climate change models to assess risk
Even if a homeowner is fortunate enough to still have fire insurance, the recovery from losing a home takes years. In an initiative called Safer from Wildfires, the California Department of Insurance agreed to allow insurance companies to use catastrophic models to inform their evaluation of fire risk rather than relying on historical conditions. This means that the companies can use the risk of climate change and its accompanying disasters to determine their rates.
In return, insurance companies must take property owners’ efforts towards improving fire resilience. Insurers are also being required to make their decisions more transparent.
Valachovic is part of a group that is working to develop a public wildfire catastrophe model at Cal Poly Humboldt and will describe the group’s efforts at Monday’s town hall. Her advice to homeowners includes raising their deductibles and carefully documenting the efforts they have made towards improving fire resistance. As of 2019, California State Assembly Bill 38, sponsored by former state assemblymember Jim Wood, requires that residential property sales in high or very high fire-hazard severity zones include disclosures about compliance with defensible space regulations.
“We’re in an awkward time,” Valachovic acknowledged. “But I think there’s a lot of reason for hope in this space,” as fire becomes more understandable and communities learn how to adapt, she said
The Fire Safety Town Hall meets Monday, May 19, from 6-8 p.m., at the Little Theater in the Lowery Building (Building 700), on the Ukiah campus of Mendocino College. The event is free, but registration is requested.