I recently attended community meetings hosted by Friends of Banner Mountain and the You Bet Firewise Community. I was very impressed by the organization and sophistication I witnessed in these groups. They articulated some important needs, including assistance with identifying and, in some cases, improving roads that could serve as evacuation routes. I just learned that the County’s Office of Emergency Services (OES) was recently awarded an evacuation study grant from CAL FIRE to facilitate the development of ingress/egress maps for each community over the next year, so solutions on that issue are on the horizon.
I also heard from the Firewise communities that the gracious volunteers leading these groups are investing quite a bit of time and energy and need some relief, either through passing off their roles to new volunteers or finding someone to share them with. I have asked County staff to help identify resources / solutions on these issues and will follow up with you when I hear more.
Finally, if you attended or watched the July 12 board meeting, you may have heard the OES presentation about an exciting new grant program that will assist Firewise communities with storm debris cleanup, giving them the ability to clear ingress/egress routes on private property (among other thing). These grants are a really exciting boost for communities that have been wanting to clean up from the damaging winter snowstorms, but simply lacked resources.
