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Fire Weather Watch
Wednesday through Friday

You all know the drill by now: 

  • Go to National Weather Service for updates on whether there is a Red Flag Warning.
  • Even if it says RFW above 1000 feet in our area, we call follow the precautions. 
  • Check PGE site for possible PSPS.
  • Put your Red Flags out if you have them and advise your neighbors to use safe practices with equipment etc.
  • Clean out your gutters and remove the debris around your home.


Leadership Meeting on Monday 10/19 at 3:30- 5PM

We are looking forward to continuing our discussion of lessons learned from the fires and identifying changes we can make to be better prepared in the future.
Highlights:
  • We will start with an opportunity to say "so long" to our beloved COPE Leader Mark Menne from Mill Creek who has contributed so much not only to Mill Creek COPE but to the Leadership group as well.
  • Chief Turbeville will talk about how to read fire incident maps that CALFIRE uses in their briefings. 
  • We will continue the discussion about the evacuation zones and other issues that were raised in the last meeting and that you shared with Dyan and Margie.
Topic: COPE Leadership
Time: Oct 19, 2020 03:30 PM Pacific Time (US and Canada)
        Every month on the Third Mon, until Nov 16, 2020, 2 occurrence(s)
        Oct 19, 2020 03:30 PM
        Nov 16, 2020 03:30 PM
Please download and import the following iCalendar (.ics) files to your calendar system.
Monthly: https://us02web.zoom.us/meeting/tZ0tdOuhqDotE9YPglAf3uoIJMBLuIXDprgc/ics?icsToken=98tyKuGhrjgoE9KUtxCFRpx5AojCa_Pwpn5aj_pkrBjpIiYAdwzfHM9gHqdWKPzA

Join Zoom Meeting
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Meeting ID: 890 3296 1792
Passcode: 317051
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Meeting ID: 890 3296 1792
Find your local number: https://us02web.zoom.us/u/ko9U5Bbzk
 

Russian Riverkeeper (RRK) is offering free one-hour burn assessments for property owners in the Walbridge Fire area. After a wildfire, burn areas and bulldozer trails are at increased risk of erosion and flooding, and runoff can be harmful to endangered salmon and other aquatic wildlife. RRK can help you get a head start on preparing for the rainy season by identifying potential problems and suggesting how these can be proactively mitigated.

After both the Tubbs Fire and the Kincaid Fire, RRK was able to perform erosion and toxic runoff control at no cost to land owners thanks to funds made available by Sonoma County. We anticipate that the County will announce programs for Walbridge fire recovery in the next few weeks, and it may be helpful to understand what your needs are now. RRK can also make you aware of other resources available to help you restore your property.

To learn more or schedule your appointment, contact education and restoration director Birkin Newell, Birkin@russianriverkeeper.org or 707-775-1416.

Fire Adapted Communities is a great resource. They send an email every few weeks. Many of them are helpful including the latest one on recovery from wildfire. They offer a framework that might be helpful for us as we think about recovery and how that fits into the work we do in COPE.

Need some help with the stress from the recent disasters? Check out this link for some resources

Check out the Air Horn Protocol. We used the protocol template and added some additional ideas. See what you think.

UCCE has a bunch of good seminars and programs happening such as: Match.Graze matching landowners with grazers, Post Fire Soil Safety, and more!

The Range Management Advisory Committee, an advisory body to the California Board of Forestry and Fire Protection, CalEPA, the California Natural Resources Agency, and the California Department of Food and Agriculture is partnering with the California Fire Science Consortium to host three virtual workshops in November, 2020. The series will cover an introduction to wildland fuels and fire behavior, a guide on the use of grazing animals to alter fire behavior, and a discussion of current and future community projects to address fire on the landscape. Please Save the Dates and join us in our discussions of these important topics! Here is the flyer.
COPE Advocacy and Policy Issues
Supervisor Gore calls for a Campaign to Pre-Defeat Fires

In the last Board of Supervisor's meeting they discussed the PGE money. They had received a good amount of input from the community and from folks like you! 
Here is his email and some tidbits below:

The discussion began with a staff presentation recapping the damages from the October 2017 fires, the $149.3 million litigation settlement with PG&E, and the board’s previous allocation of $26.8 million in September to stabilize the County.

Also summarized was community feedback about how to invest the funds, gathered from about 2,000 community members through surveys and emails following a robust outreach campaign. Feedback indicated top priorities included road repair, vegetation management, public safety, housing, and community preparedness/warning systems. This feedback aligned well with the Recovery & Resilience Framework, the County’s long-term vision and approach for how the County will recover from the October 2017 wildfires.

“The grunt work or what I would call the trench work, trench warfare, of resilience is really in vegetation management; it’s in community preparedness; it’s in home hardening. It’s in all of these deeper level things that go far beyond alert warning systems, far beyond the number of firefighters who can respond, far beyond how well we forecast and how we do evacuations,” he advised.

Community members, including wildfire survivors who pointed out that this funding is only available because their homes were destroyed, implored the board to invest in resiliency.

He made a formal motion to authorize a minimum of $25 million for vegetation management for fire prevention, $10 million to replace destroyed workforce housing, and $34.2 million for roads damaged during the wildfires.  

The board decided to revisit the minimum allocation for roads at a future meeting when staff comes back with project proposals with specific dollar amounts.  

Take good care, Priscilla 
P.S. Please VOTE
 
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