2006 TTFC Project Status

Tolt Triangle Fire Council, is recognized by the Firewise Organization
TTFC was a fairly busy community in 2006. Many property owners were working on making their homes and property more Firewise and there were many educational opportunities. The following is a brief description of the various projects and activities that related to wildfire protection.

Education and Public Relations Plan

The TTFC CWPP lists as one of the major goal the education of residents on the ways to reduce the risk of wildfire damage to homes and properties. TTFC attended and presented informational materials at a variety of events throughout the year.

Presentations/Workshops

TTFC representatives worked with various county and local officials to assist in getting the word out. Some of the meetings included the following.
  • A community meeting hosted by King County DNR to present benefits of thinning to land owners, including Firewise implications on Fuel Reduction via pre-commercial thinning. This was attended by over a dozen property owners and resulted in many of them having their property thinned.
  • Help deliver Firewise information at county Forest Stewardship class (approximately 30 students in the class).
  • A regional Firewise planning meeting, Southeast King County Community Wildfire Protection Planning, to see if additional Firewise communities could be created.
  • Presented Firewise information to the Ames Lake homeowner's association.

Public Outreach

Additional public outreach took place by having informational booths during various community events. These included the following.
  • A display for the Stillwater Safety Fair (a local elementary school) in March 2006
Information booth at:
  • Duvall Pancake Breakfast
  • Carnation 4th of July
  • Duvall Farmer's Market
  • Carnation Farmer's Market
These were quite successful and we distributed hundreds of informational flyers and brochures. In addition, during the entire month of September we had a display in the storefront windows of Miller's Community and Art Center (located on the main street of Carnation). We also managed to get 3 Firewise-related articles published in a local weekly newspaper (The River Current News) during August and September.

Mailers

In June 2006, TTFC participated with the Carnation Duvall Citizens Corps in mailing out Firewise and disaster preparation information to over 7,500 addresses in the Carnation/Duvall area. By using inserts in the local weekly newspaper, this proved to be a very cost-effective way of reaching a large number of residents.

Firewise Diorama

A new project, just started this fall, is the creation of a diorama showing the advantages of following Firewise principles. This diorama will be a great educational tool used at various informational events during the year. It is being designed and built by TTFC volunteers.

Fuel Reduction

One of the goals in the CWPP was to daylight the main and side roads in the area to improve their function as fuel breaks. This is slowly occurring on some roads as a result of the commercial and pre-commercial thinning operations.

Commercial Thinning

A cooperative thinning project started in July of 2005 continued through 2006 amongst various property owners. In 2006 an additional 100+ acres were commercially thinned.

Pre-Commercial Thinning

In the spring of 2006 several property owners started pre-commercially thinning their properties to improve forest health and eventually reduce the risk of wildfires. Approximately 200 acres have been treated.

Emergency Response/Evacuation Plan

TTFC created an Emergency Evacuation Atlas, which consists of phone trees for emergency contacts and topographic maps of the area indicating viable evacuation routes. We are working with Eastside Fire and Rescue to finalize the procedures outlined in these documents and hope to distribute the final version to area coordinators and fire department personnel before the end of the year.
CWPP  |  TTFC Homepage