November 2023 Newsletter
FIREWISE
Lakehead / O'Brien firewise had a very productive year. The Lakehead Firewise Community Facebook page was created to inform the Lakehead community about Firewise and to promote homeowner involvement. The Salt Creek community reported $100k in equivalent hours and expenses, which includes one homeowner in Gregory Creek who was affected by the Salt Fire. The O’Brien Mountain Community continues to get increased participation with volunteers to focus on ingress and egress. Homeowners have made significant fuel reduction and home hardening improvements this year, with $190k reported for the O’Brien community.
Due to the large area that the Lakehead firewise covers, the goal now is to break it up into smaller communities so they can be better served. This will take coordination with Firewise USA, Cal Fire, and the individual leaders, but hopefully we'll see some progress in 2024!
CHIPPING
O'Brien Mountain Estates was fortunate enough to be granted 2 separate chipper events during the 2023 year. The first was held on June 1, 2023 and the second was completed on November 7, 2023. In advance of both of these events, over 17 different volunteers were organized to help Owners who were not able to produce material on their own. In each case, two volunteer events were completed prior to each chipper event. The result was a resounding success in both cases. The mountain as a whole, including what individual Owners produced separately, resulted in over 950 cubic yards of brush being chipped. This does not include the approximate total of 110 cubic yards of material too large for the chipper that was transported and recycled at Shasta Sustainable Resource Management in Anderson.
See below for pictures of this project!
TIP OF THE MONTH
Both of these articles help explain the current focus on home hardening to help reduce community destruction due to wildfire.
NFPA Journal, Wildfire column, Summer 2022
NFPA Journal, Outthink Wildfire, Spring 2021 | NFPA
