Community members in some of the county’s more fire-threatened areas are getting organized to prepare for future disasters and they’re working with local government and fire officials to become more resilient.
With its lush forested slopes, Russian River frontage and narrow streets, Fitch Mountain presents an idyllic picture to many, which is why it’s been a tourist destination for almost 100 years. But for some of the area’s full-time residents, such as Priscilla Abercrombie, it’s also clearly at risk of wildfire. That awareness led Priscilla to get involved with an emergency preparedness committee in the Fitch Mountain community.
The committee began looking into a framework to organize the neighborhood and become better prepared and in 2016 they landed on a model that Oakmont was using in Santa Rosa, Citizens Organizing to Prepare for Emergencies, or COPE. The COPE program consists of a set of guidelines for organizing by neighborhood groups beginning with a detailed survey of households, assessing the strengths and vulnerabilities of the community. Information collected on a COPE survey could be “a medical professional lives at this address,” “this address has a swimming pool that could be used to fight fire,” and “at this address there is a wheelchair-bound individual who might require additional assistance in an evacuation.”
The amount and specificity of shared information can be a barrier to entry for some, Abercrombie said.
“We were up and running for a couple of years prior to the Tubbs Fire and it was always pulling teeth getting people involved, and it was still that way after the fires,” she said.
Fitch Mountain is not Oakmont, Abercrombie said, with its neatly lined up houses and full-time residents, it is a neighborhood built on steep slopes with some pockets of dense houses, and then homes with long driveways and gates.
“There are lots of summer homes and vacation rentals and many people don’t want to share their information with you,” she said.
Participation has been a challenge for other communities too. In Parkland Farms Rebecca LaLonde worked to build a COPE group in the aftermath of the Tubbs Fire.
She threw an event which drew around 25 people, though not many wanted to provide personal data for COPE.
“Even though only two or three were interested in filling out the COPE surveys, everyone appreciated getting to know their neighbors and hearing about emergency preparations,” she said.
LaLonde said she is hopeful that neighborhood preparedness can still be improved on her street in Parkland Farms, in the form of an annual neighborhood event.
West of Healdsburg, community members along Mill Creek Road also experienced an awakening after the 2017 fires and neighbors including Mark Farmer launched their own preparedness effort.
Farmer and co-leader Mark Menne organized a group under the COPE model and Menne said they have seen success in achieving buy-in.
“We now have 294 people in our database, I think we have 80 percent of the people on Mill Creek Road,” Farmer said “When you live in a rural area people don’t always want to know their neighbors, but this initiative has really helped with that.”
They divided Mill Creek Road into seven organizational zones and the group identified leaders and co-leaders for almost all of those zones, he said. Farmer said the group’s goal was for each zone to hold individual events, developing phone trees and working on mapping their zones.
Farmer said that in his zone they’ve developed a map with all 25 properties plotted and color-coded for water availability, among other assets. They also worked with the Sheriff’s Office to identify a useable helicopter landing zone and had a Sheriff’s helicopter land there two weeks ago.
The Mill Creek community has also been looking into alternative evacuation routes from the one-way-in-one-way-out neighborhood and, with the help of fire officials and private landowners, they’ve determined a route of egress to the west, Farmer said.
For its part, Sonoma County’s Office of Emergency Management is working on developing evacuation plans for 24 different vulnerable communities throughout the county, and aims to present its plans to neighbor groups and rehearse evacuations. The list of priority communities is still under development. The Department of Emergency Management recently hired a community preparedness program manager who is expected to work with COPE groups throughout the county.
Chris Godley, director of the department, said the County is supporting COPE organizations, “because that’s where the real connections and real differences are made. It’s about neighbor helping neighbor.”
Fourth District Supervisor James Gore said he is supportive of the COPE model, too.
“The future of community preparedness has to be centered and based in the community,” he said. “Government’s role should be to support the foundation of that organization and to be true partners in following the direction of these groups to get them the resources that they need to be resilient.”
To that end, Gore said he had allocated $20,000 in transient occupancy tax revenue for use by the COPE leadership group of northern Sonoma County which will go to fund community signs in Fitch Mountain, Mill Creek and northeast Geyserville, highlighting fire conditions, red flag warnings and other pertinent information.
“The COPE network’s primary focus is to become resilient without having to go through a disaster to get there,” Gore said. “In the past such groups were not always supported by public entities because of liability issues, but we cannot let liability over a potential mishap stop us from empowering communities to lead themselves into the future.”
The City of Healdsburg has been supporting the various COPE groups on Fitch Mountain, on Mill Creek and Parkland Farms through assistance from Fire Marshall Linda Collister who has attended numerous community meetings and shared information on fire behavior and how COPE groups could work with local officials.
Fire officials throughout the north county have been preaching self-reliance since 2017, and Collister’s message to COPE groups has been delivered in the same vein, she said. After a major fire or natural disaster event, firefighters won’t be able to make it to every corner of the community, so plan accordingly.
The city also has published an emergency preparedness brochure, which will encourage all residents to prepare for emergency. Collister said that residents of downtown Healdsburg typically don’t consider emergency preparedness with the same urgency as communities in the wildland-urban interface, but everyone should have a plan.
Join or start COPE today. For more information email di*******@so***********.org.
Stuart Tiffen is a field representative for Fourth District County Supervisor James Gore.
