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Memorial Day Weeked
As we approach the 2024 fire season, Watch Duty has notified us of the first wild fire this season in Sonoma County - in West County!
This is the time of year Safer West County needs your support so we can do our important work to improve our community's emergency preparedness and also continue educating residents on the most effective fire mitigation efforts. We are a completely volunteer organization dependent on community donations to pay for our website, outreach, insurance, bookkeeping, and more. Safer West County is a 501.3.c, and your donations are tax-deductible.
Please consider donating to Safer West County for this Memorial Day weekend:
Safer West County has gone to bat for numerous road fixes across our region over the past two years, and while all of them are critical, our current effort to get action on Joy Road could affect many lives. Please help us show our officials the importance of this problem and sign our petition at change.org/Fix_Joy_Road. Here is why it matters:
As an evacuation route, Joy Road affects a lot of people.
* It's crucial to note that over 600 residents rely on Joy Road as their primary evacuation route. To put this into perspective, there are approximately 150 parcels between Burl Lane and Taylor Lane. Considering the average household size of 2 people would mean 300 residents just up to Taylor Lane.
* The number increases significantly when we factor in the additional residents in the ADUs that are present in the majority of parcels in this area, possibly totaling 600 residents before we have counted everyone who uses this as their main ingress and egress.
* These numbers do not include residents on Taylor Lane, the rest of Joy Road, upper sections of Bitner and offshoot roads, Fitzpatrick Lane, Willow Creek, and the upper portion of Coleman Valley Road.
* These numbers also do not include workers who come to the area daily to staff vineyards, restaurants, and shops in the area.
* These numbers also do not consider the many tourists visiting Occidental and the surrounding areas.
* In an evacuation heading south with risk coming from the north/northeast (the most likely scenario), Bohemian Highway, the main southern artery, would be a parking lot as people from Occidental, Camp Meeker, Monte Rio, and other lower Russian River communities head south. These evacuees will likely attempt to detour to Joy Road as an alternative route, putting even more people in danger on this unsafe road.
