Issues:
Fire safety
Threat of catastrophic fire is our biggest issue in District 5. It is our version of Katrina. The Angora fire, the Gap Fire, the Star Fire, the Ponderosa Fire … all of these recent fires give a clue about the scale of disaster that could be here. Yet, this looming problem can stay easily in the background. We'd rather not look at it directly. There are no day-to-day drivers that make us deal with it.
I think it's time we take this problem on directly. I've worked with fire safety solutions for a number of years, as project manager for the Colfax fuel reduction and fire safe strategy project, as first organizing Coordinator of the Placer County Fire Safe Alliance, and catalyzing PCWA's 2006 fire safe assessment and draft fire safety plan. I think it is time for a bold proposal to finally face this problem, and come up with a solution.
I've learned a few things over these years:
- We can address a problem of this scale if we work together with an unprecedented level of cooperation.
- It will take collaborative planning on the local level, the region level, and will require the cooperation and support of state and federal levels.
- Getting this level of planning together will take a number of years.
- The timing is right to do this level of planning to anticipate the revenue stream post-2013 from the Middle Fork Project. But I also know that this will take matching funds from the state and federal levels. We have to begin now to build an impeccably united coalition of citizens, local government, and state and federal champions.
- An idea and plan that is big enough to command a full-scale approach will be needed. It will have to be dramatic, and supported by all levels from citizen and homeowner, businesses, through all the levels of government. It will be an idea that will change the way we live here in the Sierra.
Please let me know if you think the time is right, and let me know if you want to continue this dialogue. Contact me.
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