BLACK FOREST — Black Forest Fire Rescue hosted a free, pine needle (and pine cone) disposal event for residents of Black Forest on the second Saturday of September and managed to collect several dumpsters-worth of "pine-product" from those that attended.
This effort was organized as a part ongoing wildfire mitigation efforts conducted by the station and in response to being highly requested by locals.
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This event is the second of its kind hosted by the Department; the first disposal event managed to collect more than 1,250 bags of pine needles and pine cones which the Department says weighed around 17 tons. This most recent event collected around 2,200 bags filled with pine needles and pine cones.
...[T]hank you to our community members for doing the hard work of cleaning up your properties and reducing wildfire fuels around your homes. Every bag makes a difference in creating a more wildfire-ready Black Forest.
Funding for the event came from a $15,000 grant from the Ready, Set, Go Program; the Program is organized and overseen by the International Association of Fire Chiefs.
A portion of the grant went towards funding and stocking a fire mitigation tool cache which, starting in October, will provide free tool lending services for Black Forest residents in order to facilitate personal fire mitigation projects around their homes.
"It has chainsaws, loppers, everything that they need to go ahead and mitigate their property," commented Rachel Dunn with Black Forest Fire Rescue, "and we had money left over, and this is something that the community kept asking for. They wanted to have a way to dispose of pine needles, pine cones, so we were able to work with Salute Services and do this."
Black Forest Fire Rescue says that they are looking to secure additional grant funding in order to facilitate future pine needle disposal events; however, the Department also says it looking at hosting another such event in the future regardless of grant funding.
"This is a community effort to look out for themselves as well as their neighbors, because every effort put forward is going to be good not just for their own property, but for all the properties around them and the community as a whole," stated Tony Cerrone, deputy chief of operations with Black Forest Fire Rescue.
For additional information regarding the Black Forest Fire Rescue, click here.
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