Last Sunday, July 21, Roaring Camp Railroads in Felton played host to nearly 200 people who attended the Santa Cruz Mountains Firewise Festival.
The event was meant as an entertaining and educational way to learn about wildfire prevention, home-hardening techniques and to meet vendors who specialize in fire mitigation around one’s property.
Between the various vendors, there were plenty of resources available for attendees to gather in preparation for the upcoming fire season, which has already started in earnest in the West. However, the one table that saw the most visitors was not related to a vendor, but rather to a purpose.
Tonje Wold-Switzer is a CZU Fire survivor who lost everything in the August 2020 blaze. After the San Lorenzo Valley was rocked by the devastation, Wold-Switzer established the Long Term Recovery Group of Santa Cruz County, a 501(c)(3) dedicated to helping victims of fire and other natural disasters recover.
Wold-Switzer’s dedication to assisting fire victims has morphed into a variety of projects that she spearheads, including the Volunteer Rebuild Program forward.
“We are partnering with Mennonite Disaster Services (MDS) to build 5-7 homes from the ground up using volunteer labor for un- or underinsured CZU impacted families as well as supporting 2023 atmospheric river/bomb cyclone repairs,” said Wold-Switzer, whose team are creating two floor plans for new homes: a 988-square-foot two-bedroom with one-bath and a three-bedroom with two-bath units.
Wold-Switzer said MDS needs a minimum of five homes to commit; the group had achieved that number until a few weeks ago when a few clients deferred for next year.
“We have three more families in the pipeline, but we are unsure if we can move them forward through case management soon enough. We hope that by broadcasting this information widely into the community, we can attract a few more families to build for this year,” she said.
For 2024, Wold-Switzer is looking for families that have pre-clearances but have not yet started their rebuild due to lack of funds.
“We are also interested in finding families that have not yet obtained pre-clearances to enroll in next year’s client pool,” she said.
At Sunday’s event, Wold-Switzer’s table was awash with information for community members, including a Disaster Ready Guide to inform residents of safety steps for any disaster (get signed up for alerts, make a plan, pack a go-bag, build a stay box for when you can’t evacuate, and assist friends and neighbors). She offered a “What to Take When You Evacuate” chart for residents who have 15 minutes, 30 minutes, one hour or two-plus hours to leave their homes.
Most importantly, Wold-Switzer handed out “2020 ReCoverCA Housing Program” information on owner-occupied wildfire mitigation retrofits. The program provides federal grants to low- and moderate-income homeowners whose residence is located in an eligible county affected by 2020 disasters, of which Santa Cruz County is one.
The program offers federal grant funding of up to $50,000 per household to provide mitigation and home hardening for homeowners who qualify financially. Mitigation retrofits include all landscaping, construction, inspection and permitting from start to finish—a welcome relief to those residents who have been embattled with the county permitting process.
A home need not have suffered damage in a 2020 disaster to qualify for assistance, but nearly all the visitors to Wold-Switzer’s booth had endured losses due to the CZU Fire.
In preparation for future events, the program’s eligible home hardening and mitigation costs include clearing debris and other obstacles to increase the level of protection from potential wildfires; defensible space and home hardening activities that increase resilience and reduce or eliminate long-term risks, and activities that assist in bringing a home and/or property up to code with Wildland and Urban Interface (WUI) standards.
“Our goal is to help people recover from these events and help them find their footing along the way,” Wold-Switzer said.
In addition, Wold-Switzer provided registration information for CalOES, the emergency alert and public safety warning system that contacts registrants to notify them of impending disasters and related evacuation notifications.
“There is a lot of information out there, and I hope people can learn from our past experiences to ensure that our community doesn’t suffer again,” she said.
Further supporting those efforts are the local CERT (Community Emergency Response Teams) groups and the San Lorenzo Valley Emergency Network (SLVEN), both of whom were present at Sunday’s event, offering information on the resources available through their agencies.
Of particular interest to attendees was the possibility of AT&T removing landlines from the San Lorenzo Valley. In response to that potential action, SLVEN is holding a Communication II Workshop on Tuesday, July 30, from 7-9pm at Mountain Community Resources in Felton at 6134 Highway 9. Topics to be covered include: How broadband internet might come to SLV; the state of high-speed internet today in SLV; Santa Cruz County’s broadband goals and how to join the public challenge process.
With a wealth of information available to local residents, it’s a matter of reaching out to those who can offer assistance. To contact Wold-Switzer, email her at [email protected].
For information on the 2020 ReCoverCA Housing Programs, go to hcd.ca.gov/grants-and-funding/recoverca. To register for CalOES alerts, visit listoscalifornia.org/alerts/. To learn more about local CERT teams, visit santacruzcountycert.org/local-cert-teams/. To contact SLVEN, go to slven.org/home.
