RANCHO MURIETA, CA (MPG) - Recruiting new board members and laying the groundwork to pursue additional grants were key topics at the Rancho Murieta Regional Fire Safe Council’s quarterly Zoom meeting on Dec. 2.

The group also discussed the challenges of evacuating during a fire or flood and heard updates about how other communities are proactively addressing wildfire threats.

Registered professional forester Phyllis Banducci also provided an update on the Cosumnes Ladder Fuel Reduction project, funded by a $4.5 million CAL FIRE grant. (See the separate story in this issue.)

Council member Kelly Hopkins expressed concern that the Fire Safe Council is relying on too few active participants and needs to recruit new members and urged the group to broaden its base. Hopkins is the executive director of the Sacramento Valley Conservancy, which manages the Deer Creek Hills Preserve behind Rancho Murieta.

“Sorry to sound like a broken record on this,” Hopkins said, “but we need recruitment. And how do we get the people who say that they’re involved to show up? Because if they aren’t showing up, they’re not involved.”

Hopkins emphasized that the council didn’t just need warm bodies; it needed specific kinds of voices: people connected to the community, those working in insurance and real estate, ranchers, equestrians, mountain bikers and residents who care about Rancho Murieta’s safety and their ability to insure their homes.

“If we put the ask out there,” Hopkins said, “I guarantee there is somebody who’s in real estate or in insurance who’s trying to grow their résumé and show that they’re involved in the community and give back to the community that is supporting their business.”

Invited guest Brenna Howell recommended another key step to keep the Fire Safe Council viable. A Rancho Murieta resident, Howell is the fire safe coordinator for the Sacramento County Office of Emergency Services and has more than 20 years of experience in emergency management. She frequently attends the group’s meetings.

Howell stressed the need to build a foundation beneath the council’s early successes. 

“What you guys have done from the very beginning was grassroots, just coming together. Just trying to do the right thing,” she said. “Then you got a $4.4 million grant right out of the gate, which is like a dream for organized 501(c)(3) nonprofits.

“Now we’ve got to keep it going.”

Howell said the next step is to develop a Community Wildfire Protection Plan that documents the council’s past work, ties its efforts into the county’s hazard mitigation planning and ensures that future grants can build on what has already been accomplished rather than starting from scratch.

Board President Greg Pryor added perspective about the passage of time. At 71, he noted he isn’t getting any younger and no longer lives in the community, though he still owns a home. He remains strongly committed to the group’s work but said he eventually wants to pass the responsibility to someone new.

“I really am very proud of that half million dollars we got on the (Jackson Highway) infrastructure study. We’re over $5 million. We’ve really been very fortunate,” he said. “But now we need to infuse new blood, people who live here, that have skin in the game, and ongoing participation to carry this on.”

During the discussion, Hopkins outlined a first step: creating a simple Google form to gauge interest in joining the board, followed by individual interviews to determine who would be a good fit.

Pryor said he would draft some language and send it to Hopkins for refinement. The group also discussed different ways to send it out to the community.

Howell said she would help to develop a Community Wildfire Protection Plan. 

“I don’t want all of that hard work and dedication of the past years to get lost.”

Howell also assured Pryor that the work could be done remotely. 

“We can do it all via email and meet on a special Zoom just for documentation and planning,” she said.

Later in the meeting, Howell described the idea of hosting community workdays to assist residents who need help managing vegetation on their properties, similar to efforts underway elsewhere in the state. After identifying homes, securing waivers from owners, arranging liability coverage and coordinating with Cal Waste, “we can organize a day where volunteers go in, limb up trees, clear their property and clean up around the house,” she said.

The council also discussed the challenges of evacuating during floods with Howell, retired traffic engineer John Long, and Patrick Ervin, the engineer for Reclamation District 800, which oversees the Cosumnes River levees. All agreed that flood evacuation is inherently fluid and uncertain – driven by real-time conditions rather than a simple river-gauge threshold – and that road inundation on Jackson Highway, Dillard Road and Highway 16 is as critical as river height when deciding whether to evacuate, issue warnings or advise residents to shelter in place.

Pryor and Long also addressed wildfire evacuation, noting that they would be meeting with consultants studying the issue as part of the Rancho Murieta Resiliency Plan, which is focused largely on vulnerabilities along Jackson Highway, both for fire evacuations and for access during floods.

They expressed concern about the gap between the time it takes to evacuate once an incident commander issues the order and the time a wildfire could overrun those timelines. That discrepancy, they said, makes the decision to trigger the evacuation the critical unresolved issue.

Other Communities

Pryor pointed to Marin County as a model for how a region can organize and fund long-term wildfire preparedness. After early meetings at the Capitol with the insurance commissioner and several fire chiefs – including one from Marin – all of the fire departments in the county joined together to form a Joint Powers Authority focused on reducing wildfire risk. Voters later approved a special tax that now generates about $22 million annually, providing sustained funding for home-hardening assistance and fuel-reduction work.

Pryor also reported on efforts underway in the Tahoe Basin. He described how the region has spent more than a decade working on fuel reduction, evacuation planning and community protection. He said he had circulated a study and organizational layout from the basin that illustrates how multiple agencies coordinate wildfire preparedness and work from the center of the community outward to reduce the risk of fire spotting into town.

The evolution of the Fire Safe Council began in 2018, when Rancho Murieta Association Director Cheryl McElhany volunteered to lead an ad hoc committee to examine emergency preparedness in the community and develop an Emergency Preparedness Plan. That plan is still available on the RMA website.

The RMA Board formally created the Fire Safe Council as a board subcommittee in 2019, and the group elected retired firefighter Greg Pryor as its president. But after extended debate over the use of remote gates for emergency evacuations, the RMA Board and the group agreed to separate in 2023. Since then, the group has continued as a satellite Fire Safe Council, collaborating with the Sacramento County Fire Safe Council.

The Fire Safe Council has two major accomplishments under its belt. The first was securing a $4.4 million CAL FIRE grant in 2022 for ladder fuel reduction in and around the community. 

The second was collaborating with retired Supervisor Sue Frost to obtain a $400,000 Caltrans grant for the Rancho Murieta Resiliency Plan, which is examining the vulnerabilities of Jackson Highway in the event of a fire or a flood.

The council’s next scheduled meeting will be held on March 3. It is also beginning preparations for the next Wildfire Community Preparedness Day event on May 2.