Occidental Fire Safety
We began to explore leaving LA and moving north not so long after I retired in 2016. We looked at North Bay areas, north of San Francisco, like Point Reyes, Petaluma, Sonoma, and Glen Ellen. This was the very same period when huge wildfires devastated many of these same communities – the Tubbs Fire, Kincade Fire, Camp Fire, and many others. https://storymaps.arcgis.com/stories/3ea9e0ceb81042618f0de719b299d32d Often they were associated with the hot dry Diablo winds coming down from the Mayacama Mountain Range during the fall. The fall grasses are tinder dry and sparks from any source can set off a deadly conflagration.
The region is heavily forested, and there are lots of local vineyards, orchards, pastures for cows and sheep, streams, ponds, several large lakes, and the Geysers, a geothermal hot spot, generates much of the local electrical power. Like the Santa Anas in Southern California, the powerful, dry Diablo winds knock down trees and large branches, they down power lines and start wildfires. Sometimes these fires start from lightning strikes; other times from a spark from a lawn mower; most commonly, from falling trees and broken branches hitting the power lines. Nowadays, PG&E turns off the power in impacted, fire prone areas during strong diablo winds. Other times the winter windstorms turn off our power when the PG&E powerlines are broken.
In the Tubbs and Kincade fires, large sections of Glen Ellen, Kenwood, and the Bennett Valley region of Santa Rosa burned down. Our realtors showed us many burned lots that had been cleared and could be purchased for a rebuild. I had a deep visceral aversion about rebuilding on the skeletons of other people’s dream homes. About half of the city of Santa Rosa was impacted by the fires and evacuations; our friends tell us that many dear friends of theirs moved away never to return.
We eventually chose to focus our search west of the 101 freeway, where the fires appeared to be less frequent. We learned that local vineyards often served as protection from the spread of the fires because of all the moisture stored in the grapevines; whereas, open fields and pastures more commonly burned. The population of Sonoma County is less than half a million as compared to 10 million in Los Angeles County; the financial resources to fight fires are far less, and the lower population density spreads the available resources much thinner.
We finally settled close to the small town of Occidental. We average 55 inches of rain a year, more than four times as much as LA. The fires around here are more commonly forest fires than the grass and brush fires that plague LA. The forest fires are much harder to put out. During drought years, the woodlands up here are very dry, and the forest underbrush and dead trees are prone to fires. Because of the enormous losses during the Sonoma County fire seasons from 2017-2020, there is a sense of community commitment and preparedness here that at least to my awareness was completely absent when we lived in the Palisades.
In our first year here, we had 80 inches of rain, the second was 75 inches, and so far this year we are at 150% of average. So it has been very wet, generating a lot of plant growth, but preventing the fire dangers associated with extreme drought.
We live on a little lane with about 12 homes on plots ranging from one to five acres. Some are planted in vineyards; others have small orchards; one has a tiny bonzai forest, and another a riding ring and horse pasture. Ours has two little pastures, a small orchard of apple and pear trees, and is surrounded by redwood and oak groves. We back up to 80 acres of woodlands.
The first day we arrived, our next-door neighbor came by to give us a recounting of wildlife on the lane – deer, foxes, skunks, coyotes, racoons, and once a mountain lion trying to kill and eat the prior owner’s sheep. The second day, another close neighbor arrived to give us an update on forest fires, fire preparedness, and to inventory our firefighting skills and equipment (if any). Looking around together, we located a fire extinguisher in each of the three buildings (our house, the garage and the barn) and a dedicated fire hydrant connected to our well. Our local architect and I walked the land and identified four big trees that needed to come out immediately for fire safety. We found a local arborist to quickly take them down – our firewood supply to heat the house for year one.
The local fire chief lives down the lane. The CalFire station (staffed during fire season) is three minutes away, and the Occidental Fire Station (staffed full time) is five minutes away. They have more firefighting trucks and equipment than the fire station down the hill from us in the Palisades did. They are a volunteer fire department, staffed during daylight hours by paid staff and during nights and evenings by on call local volunteers. There are fund raisers during the year to raise money for the station and to maintain its equipment.
The little communities in the area had been originally settled and built by SF people wanting vacation homes. There was a small local railroad that serviced the logging companies bringing their lumber to SF and the city people getting away for the weekends. They founded and volunteer staffed all the tiny fire volunteer departments in their individual communities to take care of each other’s homes. The area was unregulated, and people liked and still like it that way, and they want to keep it that way.
The charter governing the community of Occidental spells out the local responsibilities for fire, water, sewers and police. The local population took that seriously and in concert with the local fire department has passed a series of funding measures by overwhelming majorities to fund the fire department.
OCSD (Occidental Community Services District) is the elected body responsible for fire and water services in Occidental (and surrounding area). It is one of two in the county, the other is Cazadero, a comparably small community. They are politically linked to the county government.
The local fire chief, and the Occidental Fire Department sponsor clean up days, chipping programs, etc. County would like to consolidate all West County fire stations into two mega agencies: Gold Ridge and Sonoma County. Gold Ridge already has Camp Meeker and Freestone on either side of us. That would be a shame and a mistake as the Occidental team knows every house in the district, who lives there, and how to get there and get out (evacuation routes) in emergencies; it provides far better service and is critical in providing emergency medical services on a 24-hour basis to a community with an aging population.
Occidental has a population of about 1,000 with its own fire department. Next door Camp Meeker has a population of 160 and its own fire department. Nearby Graton has a population of 1,700 and its own fire department.
I’d love to learn and understand how these local fire departments are able to attract and train and retain volunteer staff for such a dangerous job. There is a wonderful sense of community here, and many have skills with their hands and machinery that I never developed living in cities. For example, one of my pickleball friends explained that she had to learn to make her own bed by age 16; she explained that meant building her bed from scratch.
Much of the Occidental population is a good bit older than the national average (average age is 60 here), so many of the daily demands upon the local fire department are for EMT services. Many community residents live up steep narrow driveways off tiny roads with steep curves. Many live in wooden homes they or their parents built by hand from the local woodlands. Evacuation routes from the tiny, winding dead-end lanes in case of fire are via old logging roads through adjoining private properties. It took over 2 years of working with the neighborhoods that end in dead-end cul-de-sacs to locate and mark their secondary evacuation routes.
My pickleball partner has led the community engagement on fire preparedness and prevention for the last 8-10 years. They have trained radio volunteers on every block throughout the community, and host monthly meetings to go over preparedness and prevention. They know what is happening in terms of fire safety in almost every home in the community. The other day on the way to pickleball, she put it succinctly “we know the calvary is not coming if there is a big fire, so we each have to be ready to help each other, to know when and where to evacuate, to engage in fire prevention, and to be always fire ready”. There is a community wide app to alert each one of us to any and all fire dangers. There is both neighborliness and self-sufficiency out here the likes of which I have never experienced before.
The Occidental fire safety group started after a New Year’s Day 2017 party where people discussed sharing phone #s and e-addresses in the event of an emergency. Emergency can mean fire, flood, earthquake or landslides.
The Tubbs fire of October 2017 galvanized the group into action. The initial convenors were from Joy Rd. and Harrison Grade; about 100 people showed up for a community meeting on fire safety at the local church.
The steering committee of 15 people organized follow up meetings on: “go bags”, defensible space, home hardening, and selecting leaders for each neighborhood. They took inventory – e.g. who has firefighting equipment, chain saws, etc. and who has pets that need to be evacuated.
Neighborhoods 1 and 16 are the best organized. #1 includes us. #16 is organized by a woman who had experience with a big fire in Texas that killed much of their livestock. It takes a huge amount of energy, leadership skills and attention to keep these small local fire prevention groups alive, dynamic and effective. Potlucks and other community building activities are essential to keeping and sustaining group cohesion.
Two groups were formed: Fire Safe Occidental and Safer West County (a 501 c 3, fund raising arm). Safer West County was formed to encourage other small West County communities to join in the fire safety programs and to work together under the auspices of SWC. Comparable groups have sprung up: Camp Meeker, Freestone, Bodega, and Rio Nido.
The Fire Safety Occidental Group was responsible for all the green street #s dotting the roads, so that the Fire Department(s) knows who lives where. Otherwise, there was no organized system to keep track of homes and people. The "green sign" project was the first of many grants the group obtained from different agencies for fire prevention.
There is a neighborhood fire captain for each neighborhood. Our neighbors (three doors away) are our fire captains. Only two neighborhoods so far have set up Pod Leaders (or street leaders), which divide Neighborhoods into smaller, more manageable groups of 10-12 homes.
General Mobile Radio Systems (GMRS) are linked and facilitate emergency response on a range of critical safety issues. County pays for and supports them because the power outages during rain, wind, and storms make other forms of communications unreliable during emergencies. Three of the neighbors on the lane have them.
The big local property owners (80 acres plus) have their own group, Bohemian Collaborative (BohoCo). They are in the process of developing a forest management plan for the whole area.
The five nearby camps (e.g. CYO, or Mount Gilead) also have their own group and their own evacuation plans – imagine getting 600+ kids on buses to evacuate and the parents flocking/clogging the roads to the camps to take care of their own. They are part of the BohoCo as well, and they have representatives at the quarterly meetings of this group.
Occidental is an old wooden town; it has historic buildings that are on the registry of historic places, and the downtown might receive a historic listing. The chief is working on developing a fire safety corridor, a "shaded fuel break", around the whole town to protect it – a huge undertaking given the different property owners in the town.
Volunteer fire departments like Occidental are endangered; the population is aging. The young cannot afford to live and find work out here, and they move to Santa Rosa for more affordable homes and for jobs. However, the need is ever greater for the lifesaving services of the local fire department to the aging residents, and the staff gets extensive training as emergency medical technicians (EMT’s). The Community Center, fire department, county health clinic and post office are all situated next door to each other providing a range of public services so essential to the community. There are also local dentists, barbers, doctors and veterinarians in the tiny downtown center.
Five long-established Italian families own much of Occidental. No major development happens without their say so. Because they have been here so long; their fixed costs of operation and their local property taxes are low, and the vital local businesses they own, e.g. the Union Hotel, Gonella’s, and Negri’s for example, can stay afloat. They are deeply rooted in, knowledgeable about and invested in their community in ways that are hard to imagine for new residents like us and impossible to sustain in a large, fast evolving and diverse city like Los Angeles.
A few weeks ago, I was discussing the Palisades fire with the local fire chief. He and his team from Occidental had been down in the Fernwood area of Old Topanga Canyon fighting the fires of ’93 for a week. He suggested that the rebuilding in the Palisades would need to take better account of the surrounding desert and brush environment – no more palm trees, no more eucalyptus trees; rock gardens and desert plants, instead of lush tropical vegetation. Governor Newsom has just entered an executive order on locating flammable plants right next to homes in urban areas. https://www.gov.ca.gov/2025/02/06/governor-newsom-signs-executive-order-to-further-prepare-for-future-urban-firestorms-stepping-up-already-nation-leading-strategies/
As it is rebuilt, Palisades will have to build new habits, better living patterns, home and living consciousness as a fire safe community, much as next door Topanga has done, and Occidental does. We need to learn what that entails.
I’m not sure that anything can be done in either the Palisades or Occidental to stop a fire storm such as the ones that ravaged the Palisades and Altadena, Santa Rosa and Glen Ellen. We can only do so much to save communities when Mother Nature cranks up the very highest winds during a severe drought. But we can do far better than we did in LA. The highest priority is saving lives, and on that score the LA firefighters and other first responders were extraordinary in the face of horrendous conditions. But the community is devastated, and it will take a long time to rebuild. It will need strong, farsighted, collaborative and empathetic leadership.
I was struck by an article in the LA Times with an interview of the mayor of Paradise. https://www.latimes.com/environment/story/2025-01-24/ex-paradise-mayor-offers-advice-to-los-angeles-recovery-wildfires The resilience and community commitment they showed to rebuild better and safer should be a model for fire ravaged LA which has far greater resources to bring to bear.