AHAH Monthly Program Update - California Wildfires (August 2022)

CALIFORNIA WILDFIRE RELIEF UPDATE August 2022

The work greatly helped out park operations mitigate fuels on projects that wouldn’t have been possible till years in the future. The longer fuels are ignored, the thicker and more complicated mitigation efforts can be. [AHAH] helped us get to much needed projects!

- Paradise Recreation & Park District

TOTAL IMPACT

February 2021 - July 2022

9,920

LIVES IMPACTED

59

SAWYERS TRAINED

59

DEFENSIBLE SPACES CREATED

11

FUEL BREAK ACRES CLEARED

11

NEW HOMES CONSTRUCTED

1,543

HAZARD TREES FELLED

17,007

VOLUNTEER HOURS

156

VOLUNTEERS

Current Activities With help from Marin Fire Safe Council and FireFarm, a reputable and experienced contractor, members from our wildfire relief team spent three weeks in June training how to “harden” homes against wildfires. Home hardening is a mitigation strategy that complements the benefits of defensible space buffers which AHAH has been creating on landscapes around homes.

Harding a home focuses on measures which can be applied directly to structures to make them less susceptible to fire. A home is susceptible to wildfire embers entering through vents, holes, or sitting leaf litter in gutters and crawl spaces. The process looks different from home to home, but overall involves sealing any holes embers could get in, replacing vents with ones with mesh, and removing brush and retrofitting other combustible elements that are touching the home, e.g., fences, decks.

Every wildfire mitigation project, when it acts to slow down wildfire spread and intensity, contributes to the fire resilience of the areas around it. Once a row of homes has been hardened, that in turn acts as a de facto fuel break protecting homes behind that row. Those homes that have been hardened AND have had defensible space created around them make for an even more effective buffer from wildfires. The potential here is exciting!

Program Spotlight This spring, AHAH arranged a “surge project” with Sierra Nevada AmeriCorps Partnership (SNAP) and Paradise Recreation & Park District to open up and reduce fuels on a park near where the Camp Fire and Dixie Fire both started. We had a group of 24 SNAPs and 6 AHAH volunteers working together to construct burn piles, remove invasive flammable weeds, and remove hazard trees. The work allowed for healthier growth of native willow oaks, which the indigenous Maidu Tribe uses for their cultural events. After two days of work, we made 77 burn piles and felled 30 trees. Paradise R&P said that the group got more done in 2 days then what they could in 6 months.

Video Spotlight: Tree felling and what it means for the community allhandsandhearts.org

Disaster Profile

The wildfire season in California has increased in size eightfold since the 1970s, and the annual burned area has grown by nearly 500%.

The climate crisis is considered one of the key drivers of this trend, with high temperatures and droughts causing dry vegetation and dead trees, which are more susceptible to severe wildfires. Two of the deadliest and most damaging wildfires in California’s history were the 2018 Camp Fire and the 2020 North Complex wildfire. The 2018 Camp Fire incinerated the town of Paradise and swaths of surrounding foothill communities of Butte County in a single day.

The 2020 North Complex fire, the deadliest of that year, caused further devastation to the communities of Butte County - leveling the rural towns of Berry Creek and Feather Falls.

Our Work So Far & What’s Next

In 2022, our second year of wildfire relief programming, we expanded into new communities, added new partners and continued training sawyers. While also continuing with fuels management and hazard tree removal, projects to create defensible spaces gained momentum. We even widened sections of an evacuation route.

We are now pausing this chainsaw-heavy work for the next few months, in the context of another ferocious wildfire season and the increasing frequency of Red Flag days, when the risk of fire from chainsaw sparks is extremely high. While interruptions like this present challenges, our experience thus far has made two things clear: 1) local groups and socioeconomically vulnerable homeowners have immense barriers to getting the necessary recovery and mitigation projects done, and 2) there are not enough nonprofits involved in this work. Therefore, our goal to provide wildfire relief programming in California year over year remains firm. We are actively planning our return to Butte Co.

Photos: (Top) A lesson in chainsaw parts and maintenance; (bottom) SNAP members get their assignments for a day’s work in Crain Memorial Park

About All Hands and Hearts Our mission is to address the immediate and long-term needs of communities impacted by natural disasters. We communicate directly with local leaders and community members and then deploy our unique model of engaging volunteers to enable direct impact, helping to build safer, more resilient schools, homes and infrastructure.

Our Partners

We have earned a 4-star rating by Charity Navigator for the eighth year in a row. This year only six percent of rated nonprofits received this distinction for financial and operational efficiency.

info@allhandsandhearts.org