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Fallbrook Firesafe Council aims to teach local residents about fire safety

For nearly 20 years now, the Fallbrook Firesafe Council has been working, free-of-charge, to educate Fallbrook residents on how to best protect their homes, their town and themselves from the ever-present threat of wildfire.

According to the California Land Conservation Assistance Network, similar councils throughout the state educate their communities about wildfire preparedness and work with local fire officials to design and implement projects geared toward wildfire survivability, as well as organize fuel-reduction projects.

“A local Fire Safe Council is often sparked by a catalyst – perhaps a recent fire or a group of neighbors eager to spread a fire-safe message – then embraced by the community, which turns that initial interest into a committed group that finds ways to empower the residents to do their part to make the community safer,” according to the assistance network’s website. And that’s almost exactly how the Fallbrook Firesafe Council was born.

The local council, which is known for organizing wildfire safety workshops and cleanup efforts, was started 2002 after the Gavilan fire in Fallbrook.

That fire charred more than 5,000 acres and leveled 43 homes in the Fallbrook area, and it’s not even the most destructive fire in Fallbrook history – that title belongs to the Rice fire, which burned five years later burned nearly 10,000 acres and destroyed more than 200 homes – but it was certainly a traumatic one. Dorothy Roth, who is the president of the Fallbrook Firesafe Council, lost her home in the blaze. That circumstance is what spurred her and others to start the council.

“After the fire was over, a group of us, maybe six or seven, got together and decided we need to do more about making the community aware of fire dangers and preparedness and so forth,” Roth said.

The Gavilan fire took place in February 2002, and nine months later in November, Roth and her group had registered the Fallbrook Firesafe Council as a 501 (c)(3) nonprofit.

Since then, the Firesafe Council has received hundreds of thousands of dollars in grants from San Diego Gas and Electric and various other entities. And they’ve put that money to good use by doing weed abatement projects and helping clean up after major fires, like the ones in 2003 and 2007, according to Roth.

“Most recently we received in 2018 a neighborhood revitalization program grant from the (San Diego County) Board of Supervisors,” she said.

Roth said the Firesafe Council used that money primarily to get equipment and supplies for its defensible space program, which aids seniors and veterans with clearing dead and dry vegetation from near their homes to remove fuel from the vicinity that could be burned in a major fire.

Much of the help for that program, Roth said, comes from local Marines who volunteer to clear brush and weeds.

“We are very, very happy to have their support and assistance, because they do a wonderful job,” Roth said. “If I have to weed whack versus one of them has to weed whack, that’s a whole different story.”

In the past, the Firesafe Council has also put together an evacuation map for Fallbrook, which has had to be updated multiple times over the years. Currently, the Firesafe Council is working to update its website to make that and other resources available online.

Roth said her biggest goal is just to make sure that all Fallbrook residents are keenly aware of the risk of a major fire – because she said it’s not a risk that everyone is as conscious of as they perhaps should be.

“There’s what I call the glass house or glass wall syndrome that most people have,” Roth said. “It’s like there’s this big glass wall around us and all of the bad things that happen are on the outside of the glass wall stay out there. But they don’t. All of those things can happen here.”

The recent Lilac fire in 2017 burned 5,000 acres and destroyed 157 structures in Bonsall just south of Fallbrook.

The risk of a serious fire is always there, Roth said, and it’s important to her that the Firesafe Council continues to do what it can to help people become more aware.

“We’ve been fortunate in that we haven’t had any (fires) like the Paradise fire, but it’s like with the 2002 fire, the wind changed just as it was at the north end of town, and if it hadn’t changed, we wouldn’t have a downtown anymore,” Roth said.

She said she is happy, “just knowing that at least a few people have more knowledge today than they would have had without us.”

Anyone wishing to volunteer with the Fallbrook Firesafe Council, Roth said, can contact her at 760-468-0550 – although they will have to leave a message so she can weed out the telemarketers, she said.

Will Fritz can be reached by email at [email protected].

 

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