Preparatory work and early decisions
- Start tracking the hours you and your team are spending on organizing a community–the time will eventually be reported on your application.
- Conduct initial recruiting, to assess the level of interest as well as the scope (i.e., geographical area in which there are interested households).
- Decide on the boundaries of your zone. Factors to consider:
- Neighborhood buy-in. There need to be some interested homeowners distributed throughout the proposed zone, and no section preferring to be a separate community.
- Size. Cal Fire likes bigger communities, and the high initial investment of organizing a community combined with the low annual requirements creates substantial economies of scale. If there’s buy-in from a bigger area of the neighborhood and people willing to be co-leaders, consider creating a bigger zone.
- Neighboring Firewise communities. Be sure not to leave any stranded homes between your proposed zone and a neighboring Firewise community.
- Choose a name and make a map. There’s no set method for making a map, but Chris Cullander has proposed an excellent and simple process that satisfies Firewise requirements. Make sure the listed number of dwellings matches everywhere on your application.
- Attach the map to an email to the California State liaison for Firewise (listed on your Firewise portal), letting him know of your intention to create a Firewise community. They will advise you on the process, but will also need to approve it prior to it being reviewed by Firewise National.