Fire Safe Council Crew Joins Community Volunteers to Maintain Firebreak in Willits

This is the fourth installment of an exciting new series of podcasts and companion articles we are collaborating on with journalist Sarah Reith. You can listen to her podcast by hitting the play button below or you can read the abbreviated version of the story below.

A small but mighty volunteer work force came out to the Pine Mountain Fire Safe Council work party just outside Willits on September 20, to help a neighbor maintain a seven-year-old firebreak. The Mendocino County Fire Safe Council crew was also on hand with equipment and professional skills, to clear brush, bring down a widow-maker, and chip wood so it doesn’t turn into kindling for a wildfire. The Fire Safe Council fuel reduction crew’s work on the community workdays are paid for with a portion of the revenue from Measure P, a countywide sales tax that funds local fire departments as well as fire prevention and resilience activities.

The season is turning toward fall, and the legacy of the early-autumn 2017 Redwood Complex fire looms large on the landscape in Mendocino County.

Tom Varney, who has lived on his property at the top of Pine Mountain for 47 years, remembers well the fire that ushered in a new era of massive, weeks’-long blazes. He watched it move across the ridges of Redwood Valley and Potter Valley, towards Highway 101. He stayed in place even after the evacuation order until his generator ran out of fuel. When he got back, CalFire had cleared a skid road across his property. He estimates about a hundred trees were taken down. Now the community regards the clearing as a firebreak, which Varney has worked hard to maintain.

He was grateful for the mix of strangers and neighbors who showed up to lend him a hand.

“It’s very exciting for me to see people I don’t even know show up to do this work,” he said, as volunteers trickled in. “For me, it’s as much about building community as it is about getting the work done. Everybody who lives in the woods knows the fires don’t stop at your property line. So the more people that get interested in doing fire prep work, the better for everybody.”

For Angie Herman, who has been on her Pine Mountain property for 32 years, work days are a great opportunity for neighbors to spend time together and support each other. She’s impressed with how much work Varney has put into the firebreak.

“It’s amazing how much he has done, so we really want to support that,” she said, as the pile of clipped manzanita beside her grew. “We may as well maintain it,” she added, indicating the wide firebreak she stood on. It’s here already…Anywhere we can get a break in the vegetation, it all helps. It’ll slow things down. I’d like to see a few more of these.”

Jim Healy is a comparatively new neighbor who took a few minutes from piling up brush to talk about the sweat equity he’s put into fire resilience on his property. He moved from Hopland almost three years ago, but he’s lived in wildfire-prone areas for a long time. He said that when he first moved to Pine Mountain, “My particular property was very bad. It’s taken me two years to get it somewhat squared away,” clearing the fuel that’s been on the ground for years. “I wouldn’t even guesstimate” how many hours he’s spent. “All my spare time,” he concluded, with a laugh.

Herman knows all about it. She’s on the Pine Mountain Fire Safe Council board, and her chainsaw starts on the first pull, every time. After discovering that brush almost always needs to be dragged uphill, she got a chainsaw for Mother’s Day one year, thinking (mistakenly, as it turned out) that she could cut brush where she found it instead of dragging it uphill all the time. “You know, everybody’s property up here is steep, and always seems like what you need to clear is downhill,” she remarked. Now she drags brush uphill after cutting it, noting that her time on the mountain has been “32 years of being a bit of a goat.” Instead of a gym membership, she advised, “Just come to Pine Mountain, and help us clear the trees and the brush!

The Pine Mountain Fire Safe Council is already working to get another work day scheduled.

Mendocino County Fire Safe Council community work days target high-value wildfire safety improvement projects identified by community members (usually part of a local Fire Safe Council). They start with a brief community meeting to discuss fire safety improvement objectives, then everyone digs in to make some of that work happen and to create a living example of how much we can get done in a short time when we work together.

*Emily Lord, GrizzlyCorps Fellow, getting to work.*

If you’d like more information about how to get the Mendocino County Fire Safe Council crew out to a work day in your neighborhood, you can contact Eva King by emailing king@firesafemendocino.org. You can learn more about the Fire Safe mission, events and opportunities to improve fire safety at our website, firesafemendocino.org.