Leaders from the Southern California fire community, Assemblywoman Cottie Petrie-Norris, and Intterra gathered in Los Alamitos on Monday, September 23, 2019 for a demonstration and press conference on the new 150-day pilot program, known as FIRIS.
The Best Preparation for Tomorrow is Doing Our Best Today
Years ago, a friend and mentor of ours in Colorado Springs loved this community so much and was so concerned about the threat of wildfires in Colorado that he built his career in firefighting around his desire to help our community be better prepared. He figured out where the worst of the threat was and spent time and money to address it. He and his team focused on fuels assessments, risk mitigation, and educating the community about how to share responsibility for preparedness.
I remember when I first realized that his program was the one that made a wood-chipper available to folks processing limbs and trees downed by a bad wind storm that summer. It was so amazing to see that a fire department could help the community by providing a wood chipper roving from neighborhood to neighborhood and by appointment. Chippers are not cheap but this department-funded service helps reduce fuels and future fire fighting even more than it helps homeowners clean up their property. I cannot imagine how much worse the Waldo Canyon and Black Forest Fires would have been without Colorado Springs' Wildfire Mitigation program.
