August 20, 2021 — Hundreds of thousands of acres are on fire in the state of California. There’s been one or more fires every day in Mendocino County this week, and the Cache Fire has destroyed dozens of homes in Lake County. The topic of how to make a home resistant to fire, or hardening it, is timely.
On Wednesday morning, Scott Cratty stood in a light rain of ash from the Dixie or the Monument or maybe the Caldor fire, overlooking what’s left of Lake Mendocino.
Cratty is the Executive Director of the Mendocino County Fire Safe Council, and he was there, at a private home with a film crew and fire experts and a representative from Assemblyman Jim Wood’s office, to showcase a home hardening project.
The Fire Safe Council is working with a crew from the Hopland Band of Pomo Indians and grant funding to clean up roofs and vegetation around the homes of people who are low income and senior citizens or disabled. Cratty estimates there are about 2,500 such homes in the wildland urban interface in Mendocino County.
Cratty stepped behind a brand new trailer to talk about what else is new with the Fire Safe Council as Yana Valochovic, a foremost authority on fire behavior, led a pair of CalFire inspectors around the home to explain how resistant it was.