So I'm Kathy Prudhomme and I am the National Firewise USA program manager
and I've been with NFPA for about five and a half years and I'm located in
their Denver Colorado field office. So the Firewise USA program recently went
through a name change so many of you probably previously relate to us as
Firewise Communities but through an outreach project that we did last year
in six cities we dropped the Communities part of our name because as we worked
with stakeholders. They thought the Communities name said you had to be part
of an HOA or a very more formal community in that smaller neighborhoods
or rural areas weren't able to participate. So to get rid of that
confusion we got rid of the name Communities and just found Firewise USA.
And our snapshot as of this morning we are at one thousand four hundred and
forty two active communities throughout 42 states and we work through the U.S.
Forest Service with a cooperative agreement where NFPA contributes one dollar for
the program for every dollar that the U.S. Forest Service puts in and we
partner with the National Association of State Foresters. So the next slide. So
Firewise is really a framework for residents to organize and collaborate on
reducing their wildfire risk at that individual parcel level and throughout
their neighborhood or their community however they see that environment with
which they live in and it's where residents own their programs activities
and the national program provides a structure for them to work within that
has an annual renewal requirement to remain in good standing every year and
then the steps to becoming a recognized participant include working with their
designated state liaison and their staff so that person typically is part of that
State's Forestry agency. It's a little different than CAL FIRE that comes through CAL FIRE
but maybe in some states it's through the Department of Natural Resources it
just depends but those are typically who the state liaison is. So the next slide.
The steps to becoming a recognized participant includes completing a risk
assessment for those individuals that are applying to be part of the program.
In some states they have that be their CWPP. In other states they
ask that to be more on the community level. So the state liaison determines
what type of risk assessment they're going to require when participants
become a part of the program. So that's up to them to determine and my
computer just dropped the screen so let me see what slide we're at. So after the
risk assessment Wendy if you want to go to the next slide we asked them to form
a Firewise board or committee and their, in their group of participants
and typically that's some resident led and they might invite their local Fire
District to be on their board. They might invite somebody from
Emergency Management. Any of those entities that they work within to help
them as they decide what their priorities are on doing the risk
reduction projects. And then that board will develop an action plan if you want
to go to the next slide Wendy and that action plan looks at that risk
assessment and determines the things that they want to communicate to the
participating residents, that they want to pursue every year in being part of
their Risk Reduction activities. So next slide. The next requirement is that every
year they have to do some type of community educational activity and that
varies. Our participants have been in the program anywhere from a few months to
going on their 16th year. Initially the program started with a dozen pilot sites
and of those dozen sites we have nine that are still participating from way
back in 02 and a lot of them have gone through a full cycle of their
different educational activities and how they do their outreach. And some now
for this point in their evolution are working on evacuation planning and doing
evacuation drills. They're working on helping residents that might be disabled
or elderly to do the mitigation around their homes. So what that activity
consists of every year varies depending on where they are in their cycle of
participation. The next slide. Another requirement to initially become a
Firewise site and then every year when they renew their participation is they
have to invest a minimum of $2.00 per capita for their residents and risk
reduction activities. So typically a community, we'll just use a hundred for
for simple math, would be they would have to invest $200 in mitigation
activities and they can reach that very quickly because the residents can put
towards reaching that goal an hour of their time working at their individual
property gets calculated at what the national volunteer rate is and for 2017
that's $24.14 an hour so that'd be really easy
for them to meet that. But we have communities that may be they're
required per capita investment by might be $200 but they might realistically
invest more than $200,000 in their mitigation investments.
So we see people who tend to do a little bit on the lower end and then those
who've exceeded greatly. So the next slide. Once they've completed all of
those different pieces they commit to completing an application. And then that
application goes to their state's liaison for approval and that liaison
will review everything the community has done. And if they've done them that they
are initially received into the program and they become a recognized site. So the
next slide. And the annual renewal requirements that they have to complete
every year to retain their In Good Standing active status is required every
calendar year. They give us that information by November 15th and this year is the
first time state liaisons we have just spent a lot of money in
developing a new portal where state liaisons can go in and they can review
all of the activities those individual communities have completed in that year
and then they approve that renewal or they will delegate that approval back to
NFPA. So those are basically the pieces of the program. Obviously it's much more
involved and we will come in and do a full-day workshop on becoming a Firewise site and
the benefits to that. We really focus on working around the individual home and
working the three pieces of the home ignition zone and then doing those
collaborative projects with their neighbors when they do their individual
days. So if you have any information please feel free to reach out to me here
at NFPA. We offer free resources and materials, a monthly electronic
newsletter, this year we're doing a wildfire research fact sheet in
collaboration with IBHS and we're in the third month of the five-part series.
And those are pieces where you can add your individual logos to it whether a
fire department or a forestry agency and make those a piece that you distribute
to residents. The first parts of the series, the first one we did this year
was on roofing. The second one was on attic and crawlspace vents and the one
we just released was on decks and the next two issues Dr. Steve Quarles is
telling us that one is going to be on fences and one on coding. So look for
those to come up and thanks for letting us share some information today.
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