Ok, it’s not that close. But you might want to look around your home right now in the middle of winter, and see if you can pick out problem areas that may develop later in the year and become fire hazards. Now might be the time to move or replant some of those bushes that are right next to your house.

Drive around your neighborhood and look at it as a fire fighter might. Would your neighborhood be defensible if a wild fire threatened? Are you confident that fire fighters would have easy access into your area? Is your next door neighbor’s yard a threat to your own or is your yard a threat to his? If you ask yourself these questions now, and do something about the problems maybe you can minimize the fire threat when fire season does come along.

Do you know about your Kern River Valley Fire Safe Council? I just became a member of it last year. I had no idea, previously, of what this organization did for the community. It is a group of volunteers that write grants, and with the Forest Service, BLM, and Kern County Fire Department work to make the areas around our communities less hazardous. Look it up on the web. You might be surprised by all the Fuel Reduction Projects that have been done and are in the process right now. Have you heard of Chipper Days? If you would organize your community, you could request a chipper day for your area. Then in a few months, when you and your neighbors have cut brush and branches for fuel reduction and defensible space around your properties, you could request a day to have the chipper in your area. It is your responsibility to cut and pile the materials so the chipper can chip it up. The chips are left on the property. You should have at least ten properties ready to go to make it a reasonable work day for the Kern County Fire personnel who run the chipper as a community service with the Fire Safe Council.

To organize a chipper day have a representative of your neighborhood get in touch with Don Davis and submit a Project Application with the list of neighbors that will participate. All the information is on the website. Please visit it at Kern River Valley Fire Safe Council.

They have all been working, behind the scenes, to make our area safer. It is your responsibility to make your own property safe. I know it’s early but we should all be aware of how to make sure our homes are as fire safe as possible.

“Living With Fire - A Guide for the Homeowner” might still be somewhere around your house. Thousands of these magazines were handed out last year. It’s full of helpful information about our area and our own Fire Safe Council.

Be safe, be aware.

Terry Bolt, member

Kern River Valley Fire Safe Council