Grass Valley, Calif. — The California Office of Emergency Services has announced it will award a $4,932,000 grant to the Fire Safe Council of Nevada County to help low-income residents harden their homes against wildfires.
The funds, supplied by the Federal Emergency Management Agency, will be available through the Fire Safe Council’s Home Hardening Retrofit Pilot Program. The program will help property owners who have cleared vegetation create defensible space and take further steps to protect their homes. Phase one will provide an initial $245,700 to perform public outreach, defensible space and home hardening assessments, as well as vendor procurement for qualified program applicants.
“We are thankful for this grant from the CalOES and FEMA,” said Jamie Jones, Executive Director of the Fire Safe Council. “When we submitted our proposal in April 2022, we identified a need where many of our residents did not have the means to protect their homes. The grant allows us to extend our Access and Functional Needs Program, where low-income residents receive free defensible space clearing services, to also ‘harden’ their homes against flying embers.”
The Fire Safe Council will organize regional fire preparedness agencies, municipalities and contractors’ associations to carry out home hardening projects to qualified residents until funds are depleted in Nevada County and surrounding areas.
“Flying embers cause 60 to 90 percent of home loss in wildfires,” explained Jim Mathias, Wildfire Prevention Manager with the Fire Safe Council. “Hardening a home keeps embers outside the house, lowering the chances of the home catching fire. Implemented on a large scale, this could prevent a cascade of structure-to-structure ignition through whole neighborhoods.”
“We are excited to launch this program quickly,” Jones said. “As we better understand the timelines for the grant, we will communicate those to the public on our website, areyoufiresafe.com. Our first actions are to identify partners who can help each resident develop a plan to harden their home and to determine how residents can qualify to receive financial support to implement this plan.”
About the Fire Safe Council of Nevada County: The Fire Safe Council of Nevada County is a local non-profit organization dedicated to making Nevada County safer from destructive wildfire through fire safety projects, partnerships, and education. Since 1989, the Fire Safe Council of Nevada County has helped over 60,000 residents join Firewise Communities, install address signs, dispose of green waste, receive low-cost chipping, protect the community through large scale fuel reduction projects, and understand how to improve the defensible space around their home or business.