BIDEN DIRECTS $37 MILLION TO SONOMA COUNTY FOR FIRE RESILIENCE. FIRST SUCH GRANT IN NATION.
In a meeting with Western governors today, President Joe Biden announced that Sonoma County would be the first in the nation to receive tens of millions of dollars in federal FEMA funds to help build wildfire resilience in the face of unprecendented recent wildfires and the onrushing threat of climate change.
The $37 million grant will help Sonoma County and its residents clear dangerous fuels, build buffer zones around urban wildland interfaces, harden structures against wildfire, create greenbelts and develop shaded fuel breaks. To qualify for the money the county must put up a 25 percent match…or $13 million, which it plans to do using PG&E settlement funds. That would make the total funding pot to build resilience some $50 million.
The county plans to use the money in large and small projects, from working with homeowners at the neighborhood level to build defensible space, to tackling big projects like reducing fuel loads and creating a wildfire resilience zone that protects vulnerable communities across the county. Among the areas where projects are already planned are Mark West, Sonoma Mountain and the Lower Russian River, however the funding will allow resilience work to take place in many other locations as well.
Since 2017 Sonoma County has been at the epicenter of the threats posed by a changing climate, and more extreme wildfires. In four years, about a half dozen major wildires have scorched more than 300 thousand acres across the county, destroying some 7 thousand structures, killing two dozen people, and in the case of the Tubbs, Kincade, Walbridge and Glass Fires, forcing the evacuation of hundreds of thousands of Sonoma County residents.
Author: newsofthenorthbay
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