Wendy Ward and Fire Engineer Ethan Kennedy. Photo by Catherine Stachowiak
At a Fire Wise event, Thursday, July 18 at the Kern River Valley Senior Center, the speaker was Wendy Ward who is Kern County’s Wild Fire Mitigation Coordinator and the Regional Coordinator for the Fire Wise program with Cal Fire.
Insurance professional Fred Clark and Liz Mendia of the Kern River Valley Chamber of Commerce coordinated the event
Ward spoke along side Fire Engineer Ethan Kennedy who fielded Kern County Fire Department related questions. Joining the two speakers was Trudy Mahoney, chair of the Kern Fire Safe Council and Coordinator Tom Klein, head of Kern Valley CERT was also available during the event to answer Red Cross related questions.
Ward said she’s a Kern Valley native. Her husband worked in the valley as a firefighter with the US Forest Service for over 25 years. Being born and raised in the valley she wanted to serve the community helping make it more fire safe.
She explained that originally there were three Fire Safe Councils, one in the Kern River Valley, another for the Mountain Communities, and the third was for Tehachapi area. However those entities died out previously. Eventually a group in the Mountain Community of Kern County began one entity representing the entire county, called the Kern Fire Safe Council. The vision of Kern Fire Safe Council (KFSC) is education, outreach, and preparation for wildfires. The council works with all the communities to fulfill the vision of having a community safer from wild fires. The council provides education in schools and for community events and also produces educational webinars.
One of the grants the KFSC received was to do defensible space inspections and home assessments. Now they’re working with Kern County Fire Department and US Forest Service to identify projects in the Kern Valley to make the community more fire wise. KFSC does not do code enforcements. KFSC does not lobby.
Kennedy said that the Kern County Fire Department could inspect properties, hear concerns, issue citations, and give a correction period. However they do not have the authority to do weed abatement. If the public has concerns they can email the local department or call (661) 391-7000, the headquarters, to have a message forwarded for any hazard reduction problem.
Kennedy said that June 1st is when the department starts Hazard Reduction countywide with state responsibility area, and with three stations, split into three shifts. Once inspections are concluded the department logs the information. Mailings are then sent for citations. The property owner has 15 days to correct a violation or at least contact the department to let them know the status. He said the department tries to work with people who have a death in the family, disability, illness or another excuse. The department then does re-inspections. If there is a recurring violation there will be an increased fine. Violators have the same amount of time, 15 days to correct any violation. If the violation isn’t corrected, the county puts the fee on the tax rolls. The Kern County Fire Department inspects 46,000 properties.
Ward said that the Fire Wise USA program encourages neighbors, working along side neighbors, to group together clusters of homes, within neighborhoods, to get property owners to do fire safe mitigation. Speakers gave the impression having such a Fire Wise Community affiliation could ultimately lead to lower insurance rates.
Clark said, insurance companies would be watching for Fire Wise communities going forward. Rate reductions, discounts, and other incentives would be coming with determinations from the department of insurance being a driving factor. Clark said, “It’s going to have an impact on all of us somewhere in the near future.”
Clark believes the community should get in on the beginning stages of forming Fire Wise Communities. He is afraid of all the changes that are coming to Californians in the not too distant future, with regard to insurance rates. He said that all the companies care about is the zip codes residents live within.
Ward said a Fire Wise Community can be as small as 8 neighbors doing all they can to make their properties fire safe. For more information please see https://kernfiresafe.org/
