April 2020 Quarterly Newsletter

Vacation Beach Fire Safe Council

Quarterly Newsletter, April 2020

Welcome to the Vacation Beach Fire Safe Council (VBFSC) Newsletter! We find our neighborhood and the rest of the world in the midst of a pandemic. We don’t expect Mother Nature to take that into account during fire season, however, so we have still stayed focused on keeping our part of the world safer in the upcoming fire seasons.

After last year’s neighborhood-wide meetings we had at the Bowman’s house (one focused on evacuation and preparedness and the second on defensible space), we then experienced our close proximity to the Kincaid fires, we had renewed interest and commitment to protect ourselves as best we can.

Our primary goal is to create a fire safe community. In order to achieve this we are starting with the following five objectives.

• Our first and most critical objective is to keep the summer bridge open through fire season or, if possible, put in motion a redesign of the bridge that would result in a year-round bridge/exit. To this end, we have met with Johannes Hoevertsz, the director of Transportation and Public Works for Sonoma County. He agreed completely that the Summer Bridge should provide a safe exit for more if not all of the year. He is more than willing to work towards this objective with us. We also met with Lynda Hopkins who was equally enthusiastic about meeting this objective.

• Our second objective is to identify hazardous areas near homes such as overhanging tree limbs, uncut shrubs and overgrown empty lots. Much of this work was done last fall; much more needs to be done. Our Supervisor’s office has been agreed to advocate for major clearing all along Neeley Rd.

• Our third objective is to contact homeowners and absentee landowners to discuss the hazards.

• Our fourth objective is to educate our community about fire safe properties and the importance of landowner’s reducing the fuel on their property, as well as create interest in work parties to assist homeowners with hardening their properties (clearing fuel away from their homes. One of our members, Josh Kitchens, a Cal Fire Captain would be happy to assist any neighbors in identifying areas that would make their homes safer (joshkitchens14@gmail.com).

• Our firth objective is to obtain government funding to support landowners who are financially unable to clear vegetation and have it hauled away.

One thing that the Russian River Fire District and Cal Fire personnel emphasized was the usefulness of prominent address signs for our homes and properties. The RRFD has these signs available for $15. They are doubled sided and visible in the dark. As they say on their website, “we can’t help you if we can’t find you!” Here is a link to the signage page of their website: https://www.russianriverfire.org/address-signs. We are encouraging everyone to consider getting one for their home.

If you have any questions, info you would like to share with us, or you would like to be added your contact list, please email your name, address and phone number to vacationbeachfiresafecouncil@gmail.com.