Fire Updates

I have a secret tradition in my office. When we have a special win, I do a happy dance. It’s a brief moment of celebration as we take one toe-tapping step closer to our goal of helping our county thrive. When we created the Community Resiliency and Disaster Preparedness Fund in 2018 in the wake of the 2017 Redwood Complex Fire, we called upon our supporters to help us raise $100,000 for our efforts and they answered the call. Disaster recovery can be a long and challenging path and this new fund was the light at the end of the tunnel. Cue happy dance.

Since our work began after the Redwood Complex Fire, we have often said that we are building the plane while flying it. Disaster recovery is a new role to many involved in Mendocino-ROC, and each phase has offered up new opportunities to learn. Our greatest goal throughout the process has been to get fire survivors back home – whether that means into a long-term rental, purchasing a house, or rebuilding. Over this spring we realized the need to develop multiple building tracks to help survivors, given the construction time required to complete a single home. We are pleased to share that we now have more options in place.

The scent of drying putty is fresh in the air as a 10-year-old fire survivor walks me through her future bedroom. “My dad said I can have the master bedroom and he is taking the smaller room across the hall,” she says with a smile. Just weeks from moving home after a year and a half living in FEMA housing she shares with excitement, “We went to the furniture store and I got to pick out my new bed and dresser.” A sense of ownership and restoration to the childhood interrupted is heavy in her voice, and I tuck away the lump in my throat and smile. The work the Foundation has been able to do as leaders of Mendocino-ROC has been detailed in the data, but the true impact is found in this bare bedroom overlooking scorched trees where a ten-year-old girl is getting excited about picking up where her family left off.

I once read that the “silent killer” after a disaster is a lack of community cohesiveness. The disaster is the shock; the number and diversity of its voluntary organizations and their willingness to cooperate serve as the shock absorbers. For me this encapsulates the concept of community resiliency. In those dark months after the Redwood Complex Fire, the challenges at times felt insurmountable and I needed to regain a sense of hope – a way to illuminate our future and protect our community from another disaster on this scale. I reflected on this need for preparedness and cohesiveness, and this quest for illumination led to the creation of our new Community Resiliency and Preparedness Fund.

The winter rains have brought to a close another devastating wildfire season, and new homes are springing up where just a year ago there was nothing but ash and debris. This holiday season inspires gratitude for all that has blossomed in the preceding months and hope for what is yet to be done. As we continue our efforts to bring every survivor of the Redwood and Mendocino Complex fires back home, we at the Foundation are especially grateful to all of those who supported our work to make a difference in our county this year, and those who have supported our work for a quarter century as we celebrate our 25th anniversary