On Jul 26th the South Skyline Emergency Preparedness Organization and the South Skyline Fire Safe Council hosted our first "Community Days - Are You Prepared?" session of 2025 at the La Honda Elementary School. A free day-long workshop on preparing your family, home and neighborhood against the risks of mountain living, from wildfires and earthquakes to accidents and injuries, it was a fun and educational day with around 60 attendees - about as many as we've ever had at one of these. We covered a lot of interesting material -- even we the organizers learned a bunch of stuff. We followed this up with a second session Sep 27th at Saratoga Summit, where we had another 40 attendees.
In the morning The Fire Safe Council gave presentations on Home Hardening, Defensible Space and Fuel Management. As part of that we heard about the La Honda Fuel Break presented by the SMC Resource Management District, illustrating techniques for community wide fuel management, highlighted by the work of Brush Hog. These large scale projects are being encouraged from a funding standpoint and the techniques used offer important ideas for landowners across our area. In this context we also introduced Midpeninsula Open Space who are also very active in fuel management projects these days. Komodo showed off their quite revolutionary fire retardants, great examples of the new and very useful technologies emerging in response to our Wildfire threats. Rounding out the session was a discussion of FireWise communities as an organizational tool for achieving neighborhood level protection while providing insurance discounts. Speaking of insurance, United Policy Holders provided a valuable update on the home insurance situation.
After an excellent lunch from Taqueria de Amigos in Pescadero, we started the afternoon with a session on neighborhood organization and communication. We focused on how to achieve consensus and inclusiveness in neighborhood efforts, as well as how to find a good balance between radio-based communications and current internet and cellular technologies such as RCS text messaging to allow fast and friction free communication across neighborhoods given topographically diverse environments. The group then had a chance to experiment with low power radios in a very realistic way. After this we turned to our First Arriver Workshop. Given our many traffic accidents, we periodically teach our residents about what to do if they are the first person on the scene of an accident, focusing both on first aid as well as traffic control. Participants got a chance to try a variety of techniques. Interestingly, as happened at previous such sessions, a mother and her daughter who attended reported encountering an injury accident and being very grateful for the training to know what to do. This session also gave us an opportunity to introduce the San Mateo County Medical Reserve Corp to the community about their efforts to build out their volunteer network in SMC. At the second session we had a special focus on controlling bleeding during this session.
We rounded out the day with our prizes, we made sure everyone walked away with something useful.
We are very grateful to our hosts, vendors and presenters!
In depth sessions:
Practical skills you can use and ideas you can act on, taught by expert practitioners, updated for 2025!
- What you can do for your home and family:
- Home Hardening, Defensible space and the new 0-5 requirements. Presentation
- Managing the Biomass in your Defensible Space.
- San Mateo County Resource Conservation District on La Honda Fuel Break Project
- Midpeninsula Open Space Fuel Reduction Efforts and working with Neighbors. Presentation
- Home Insurance Update Presentation
- Learn and practice simple but effective first aid techniques and what to do when you are first on scene at an accident, especially focusing on severe bleeding
- Home Hardening, Defensible space and the new 0-5 requirements. Presentation
- What you can help your neighborhood do: - Don’t worry – we’ll show you how.
- Find the right technologies for communicating with your neighborhood in an emergency from radio to internet - and you'll get to practice as a "neighborhood". Presentation
- Getting neighborhood buy-in for preparation efforts. Presentation
- Form a Firewise Community – how it helps, what does it take? Presentation
Vendors and Partners: Brush Hog, California Sunlight, Komodo Fire, Fire & Rain Systems, Midpeninsula Open Space, San Mateo County RCD, SMC Medical Reserve Corp, United Policy Holders, South Skyline Fire & Rescue, Cal Fire Saratoga Summit, Cal Fire Felton
2025 Community Days:
Are You Prepared?