Lassen Fire Safe Council is sending out an urgent reminder to all of our Firewise USA communities within Lassen County. In order to renew your Firewise USA certificate for 2026, all reporting is due by November 21, 2025. Investing the equivalent of one volunteer hour (valued at $25.43) per residential dwelling unit within the site’s boundary in annual wildfire risk reduction efforts is a requirement of the national recognition program’s criteria for maintaining an “In Good Standing” status. Examples of potential actions, activities, and expenses that can be used in meeting the total investment are listed in photos & captions. These are only examples, it is not a comprehensive list, but it should be more than adequate to help your community renew its certification.
Below is a link to the form you can use to report volunteer hours (your own property counts!) or monies spent.
https://www.lassenfiresafecouncil.org/files/68e03949c/FIREWISE+ACTIVITIES+MATCHING+FUNDS+Recording+Sheet_Fill-in.pdf
If you know your community leader, please get the completed form to them well before the deadline so they can enter the data into the Firewise USA portal for your community. If you do not have a contact, but you have hours to report, send us a message so that we can connect you to your community leader or you can attach the form in an e-mail and send to [email protected]. We will ensure the information gets to the right place! Please comment, message, or e-mail us with questions or for assistance. Loss of a community’s Firewise USA certification may effect your insurance renewals or costs and when it comes to coverage, we all need all the help we can get!
Firewise USA Summary of Requirements:
Every year
Educational outreach: Host an outreach event and work with neighbors on addressing items in the action plan.
Risk reduction investment: Record your community’s efforts to reduce its wildfire risk in the calendar year. You can include any time invested and expenses your community may have had to reduce its wildfire risk. See examples in detail on the images in this post and in the captions for those images for the many types of activities and dollar investments that count towards your required renewal amount.
At a minimum, each site is required to annually invest the equivalent of one volunteer hour per dwelling unit in wildfire risk reduction actions. If your site has identified 100 homes within its boundary, than 100 hours of work or the monetary equivalent.
Thanks!l
Ruth Morentz, Board Chair
