Wrightwood Wildfire Awareness Day

Wrightwood, CA May 5, 2004 -— The Wrightwood Fire Safe Council will hold its first major public event, Wildfire Awareness Day, Saturday, May 15, 2004, 9 am to 5 pm, hosted at Mountain Hardware, 1390 Highway 2, in the village of Wrightwood.

Fire Safe Councils are being formed in communities all over California to act as liaisons between residents and public fire agencies. Activities vary, depending upon the needs of each community. The Wrightwood Fire Safe Council will focus on education and act as a facilitating resource to help community stakeholders reduce vegetation in the heavily overgrown private lands surrounding Wrightwood.

"It's time to throw out the old misconceptions that all wildland fires are bad," said Council Vice Chair Clint Kearns. "Years of over control of small natural fires have left us with forests that are overgrown and unhealthy. In the absence of natural burning, we now need to step back into the picture and restore forests to healthy, open, park-like stands."

Kearns explains that thinning out the "under story", (small plants that act as ladders carrying fire into the tree canopy), and thinning trees to numbers that can thrive on the available water resources will enable the forest to fend off bark beetle attacks, and provide defensible space around the community for fire fighters.

According to Council Director John Aziz, the WWFSC and the Wildfire Awareness Day hope to give residents a new perspective on wildfire. "We cannot prevent fire, because man can never prevent ignition. We must learn to view wildland fires as a storm to be weathered. Just as people in the Midwest and Southeast weather tornados and hurricanes, those who choose to live near wildlands, must prepare to survive the fire that is some day inevitable."

On Wildfire Awareness Day, Fire Safe Council members will be on hand to discuss these issues with residents. Representatives from San Bernardino County Fire, Angeles National Forest, and the California Department of Forestry will participate in the event, and Laura Merrill, Ph.D., Forest Service Entomologist, will answer questions regarding the Bark Beetle problem facing Southern California Forests. Smokey Bear will visit with children and there will be a variety of fire safe information available for all ages.

Exhibits will include fire fighting equipment, examples of bark beetle activity, and San Bernardino National Forest's "Wildfire Education Experience". This impressive exhibit explores a healthy forest and offers a very real sense of the intensity of wildfire.

For more information, call 760 249-5248 or visit www.wrightwoodfsc.com.
   
Contact:   
Clint Kearns
760.662.6044




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