MAMMOTH GETS WISE

Three communities in the Town of Mammoth Lakes have begun the process for jointly mitigating wildfire risk in hopes of reducing fire insurance costs and minimizing the chance of losing their properties to flames.

The Knolls neighborhood, the Juniper Springs Homeowners Association and some Sierra Valley Sites neighborhoods are on their way to earning Firewise USA distinctions. 

Firewise USA is a national program implemented by the National Fire Protection Association (NFPA) to help reduce wildfire damage through mitigation techniques.

The Firewise distinction is awarded to individual homes, but to acquire that distinction homeowners must show they’ve taken voluntary steps within their local community to reduce their collective risk. 

Because Mammoth Lakes shares its borders with the densely wooded Inyo National Forest, resident homes are at higher risk for spot fires caused by ember ignition. This risk also means homeowners are unlikely to receive private insurance coverage or their private coverage is very pricy.

The California Department of Insurance (CDI) ‘Safer From Wildfires’ regulations state property owners in communities designated as Firewise USA may be eligible for wildfire insurance discounts.

Communities, to qualify, must first create a committee of volunteers and appoint a resident leader to represent them. Communities can be as small as eight homes. Then, they must conduct a Community Wildfire Risk Assessment alongside Mammoth Lakes Fire Department (MLFD). The Community Wildfire Risk Assessment must be updated every five years.

The community must create a 3-year Action Plan about how the community will address areas of concern specific to their communities using their Community Wildfire Risk Assessment. 

Each year, the community needs to show they’ve been working towards the goals in the Action Plan but they don’t necessarily need to achieve their goals every year. Not every house needs to contribute, but each community is required to collectively contribute an hour of service for each house within their boundaries towards mitigation techniques.

Those volunteer hours can be as simple as raking up pine needles, and can be substituted with monetary contributions. 

“It’s a pretty simple list, and it’s not hard to achieve,” said MLFD District Chief Bob Rooks.

The mitigation techniques outlined in Firewise are already mandated by the fire codes in the state of California and the Town of Mammoth lakes. They are called “Defensible Space Codes” and require annual maintenance such as the removal of litter and pine needles.

These codes are actually stricter than the Firewise USA requirements, but they’re hard to enforce and thus often ignored, Rooks said. 

People can ask for a personal home risk evaluation from the MLFD directly.

“We totally support what [Firewise USA] is doing because they are making contact with more people at one time and in a quicker fashion than we can,” Rooks said.

Both enforcing the fire code and inspiring a community effort is specifically challenging in Mammoth because there are so many part-time residents and property owners who don’t live in town, Rooks said.

“I think that one of the goals with just forming these neighborhoods is to create more camaraderie with your neighbors that maybe you don’t know quite as well,”  said Crystal Medhurst, Outreach and Education Coordinator at the Whitebark Institute.

Each of the communities has approached these requirements differently, said Beth Burnam, the Firewise USA Regional Coordinator for Mono and Inyo counties. Burnam calls herself a “professional volunteer,” meaning she doesn’t make any money from the work she does. She took on the role “voluntarily and a bit reluctantly” in 2023.

She had worked on other fire mitigation projects in Topanga and became interested in helping Mono and Inyo counties after reading a newspaper article, but didn’t know if she wanted to take on the full responsibility.

“I’d always taken on my community organizing a little bit rogue” she said. “But then as I started working within Mono and Inyo counties, I realized having this title was going to be important.”

The Mammoth Lakes Knolls neighborhood, made up of about 250 homes, has made the furthest progress of the three communities. They have already completed a Community Wildfire Risk Assessment with Mammoth Lakes Fire Department and plan to complete their Action Plan in the coming weeks.

The neighborhood started organizing within its Homeowners Association, which allowed people who were on the HOA list to voluntarily join a separate newsletter, and then extended outside of the HOA through word of mouth to other nearby homeowners, Burnam said. 

While completing their Community Wildfire Risk Assessment, the community called the MLFD’s attention to a neglected vacant lot near the Community Center owned by the town, Burnam said. According to Mammoth Lakes’ fire code, all vacant lots must also comply with the defensible space requirements.

“We ended up going over there and we worked on it for a week and a half and we took out 30,000 pounds of green waste, and most of that was raking,” Rooks said. “We dropped a couple of dead trees and we did a little bit of limbing, but most of it was just litter on the ground that’s collected over 30 years.”

Collecting and hauling away green waste is one of the most challenging and expensive parts of wildfire mitigation, and the MLFD is working to brainstorm ways to make disposal easier, Rooks said.

The Juniper Springs community has also made good progress, but they’re a unique community because all of the residents involved live in the same building and are members of the HOA.

The building also has a commercial component, which makes Juniper ineligible for any potential insurance discounts.

“They haven’t really been asking for much help, partly because the woman who’s heading that one up started one at her other home in Tahoe so she kind of knows how it goes,” Medhurst said.

Their primary goal is to spread the word about Firewise, especially since many residents there own homes elsewhere in California, Burnam said.

Sierra Valley Sites has received the least support and made the least progress, Burnam said.

There are eight other communities across Mono County and two communities in Inyo county working towards the distinction, Medhurst said. 

Swall Meadows, which had forty structures burn in 2015’s Round Fire, has successfully been granted the distinction.