General Contact Number: (530) 621-5567

Office of Wildfire Preparedness & Resilience

County of El Dorado

Office of Wildfire Preparedness

and Resilience

Firewise Community

"Creating a fire-adapted and resilient El Dorado County through collaboration and coordination"

Thinking of becoming a Firewise Community? Below are the steps to follow:

Organize it:

Create a board or committee of volunteers to represent your community, including residents and partners such as Cal Fire or the local Fire District.

Identify a resident leader who will be the program point of contact.

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The board or committee defines the boundaries of the site and determines the number of individual single family dwelling units included.

-Community size: Minimum of 8 dwelling units and a maximum of 2,500.

-Multiple Firewise USA sites can be located within a city/town or master-planned community/HOA.

-Boundary Maps can be created using the El Dorado County's online Mapping tool.

Plan it:

The board or committee will work through their Regional Coordinator to complete a community wildfire risk assessment. The assessment should be a community-wide view that identifies areas of successful wildfire risk reduction and areas where improvements could be made.

Emphasis should be on the general conditions of homes and related home ignition zones. The assessment is a living document and is required to be updated at least every three years. As circumstances change (e.g., completing activities, experiencing a fire or a natural disaster, new construction in community, etc.), the action plan may need to be updated more frequently.

The board/committee will use the risk assessment to create a three-year action plan, broken down by year, that identifies and prioritizes actions to reduce ignition risk to homes. These can include community wide investments along with suggested homeowner actions and education activities that participants will strive to complete annually, or over a period of multiple years.

NEED ASSISTANCE WITH YOUR APPLICATION? CONTACT YOUR

EL DORADO COUNTY REGIONAL COORDINATOR:

Richard Galvin, West Slope Coordinator

Arend Tosti, CAL FIRE Coordinator

Jason Brand, Tahoe Basin Coordinator

Do It:

Each year, neighbors complete educational and risk reduction actions identified in the plan. These go towards your Community's annual reporting efforts.

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-Find examples of activities that count towards your investment.

-Use a volunteer hourly worksheet to collect information from residents in your community. At a minimum, each community is required to annually invest the equivalent of one volunteer hour per dwelling unit in wildfire risk reduction actions.

For example, your community has identified 100 homes within its boundary, than 100 hours of work or the monetary equivalent, as identified by FireWise USA, need to be completed for that year.