Please join us at the Northwest Regional Fire Safe Council Conference
Posted: 10/01/2009

Please save the date and spread the word!

What: Northwest Regional Fire Safe Council Conference

When: Thursday, December 10, 2009 and Friday December 11, 2009

Where: Fortuna Fire Station, 320 S Fortuna Blvd Fortuna, CA 95540
Why:
• Support regionalized networking among Fire Safe Council representatives
• Foster cross-training in the variety of Fire Safe Councils functions
• To provide useful tools to build successful Fire Safe Councils within the region so that they may be effective in helping to reduce the risk of wildfire damage to local communities and resources.


Feedback Survey:
We are still interested in knowing more about what you would want to get out of such a conference. The conference steering committee, consisting of members of our local FSCs, UC Extension, Six Rivers National Forest, Humboldt State University, local and state fire protection, and the California FSC, generated a list of possible conference topics and would love your feedback. Thanks to all of you who have already filled out the survey and sent it back to us. So far, we are seeing that fuel reduction implementation and Fire Safe Council capacity building are rising to the top of the topic priority list. We would like to get the remainder of your survey responses back no later than October 9, 2009.

Additional Feedback:
In addition to the survey, we are asking you to send us information about what your biggest challenges and greatest successes have been. Through this exercise, we hope to gain information that will help us prepare to address challenges and potentially request panelists that have been successful in dealing with common issues. So we would like to hear back from you about issues such as:
• Challenges –
o What is has been the hardest thing about starting up and maintaining your FSC?
o What obstacles stand in the way of you completely fulfilling your mission?
o And so on…
• Successes –
o What is your FSC really good at?
o What accomplishments are you most proud of?
o And so on…

A sketch of the evolving program follows:
Breakfast service and lunches for both days will be provided by the Fortuna Fire Department Women’s Auxiliary – Details and budget are still being worked out.

Several breaks will be planned to allow for lots of networking.

First Day:
o AM (9:00 AM to 12:00) – Local Humboldt County group meets to review and discuss the draft Humboldt County Fuels Reduction Plan update and maps.
o Lunch (12:00 -1:00)– mostly folks from the morning session but invite everyone to sign up
o PM (1:00- 5:00) – extended introductions (softly facilitated, lots of time for Q and A, some panel discussions, and a mix of prepared questions and spontaneous questions).
 Each participant introduces themselves identifying what their affiliation is and what they hope to gain from participating in the conference
 Each FSC has an opportunity to share something about their organization (biggest challenges and greatest successes) with time for Q and A from other participants
 FSC Panel discussion with prepared questions based on feedback about greatest challenges leading into more free-form Q and A - Identify panelists based on who has had success with key challenges.
 Agency Panel Discussion – Agencies share how they can assist FSCs with Q and A

Second Day:
o AM – (9:00 -12:00) –
 keynote speaker
 Technical presentations (determine topics and presenters based on priority topics identified through survey)
o Lunch (12:00- 1:00)
o PM – (1:00 – 5:00)
 Continued technical presentations
 Roundtable to address issues that came up the previous day.

Conference Registration:
An on-line registration site will be activated in mid to late October once we confirm the program.

Thanks for your input!

Cybelle (staff support for the Humboldt County Fire Safe Council)


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Cybelle Immitt, Planner II
County of Humboldt
Community Development Services
Planning Division
3015 H St. Eureka, CA 95501

phone: (707) 268-3736 (direct)
fax: (707) 445-7446
cimmitt@co.humboldt.ca.us
http://www.co.humboldt.ca.us/planning