About Us

The Greenhorn Road corridor is a heavily forested area, covering approximately 3,400 acres of oak, pine, cedar, madrone, and manzanita trees, leaving you with a feeling of intimate contact with nature. Nestled in amongst the trees are approximately 1,000 dwellings and 2-3,000 residents.

 
It's a beautiful place to live, but in the event of a catastrophic wildfire, we only have one paved, two-lane road out--Greenhorn Road to Brunswick. For this reason, a few concerned residents got together in 2019 (following the devastating Camp Fire in Paradise) to look for ways to organize our community to improve our resilience to fire and our ability to evacuate safely if needed. Becoming a recognized Firewise Community was the obvious choice.

What Is a Firewise Community?

The goal of the National Fire Protection Association's (NFPA) Firewise USA® program is to educate residents on how to adapt to living in a wildfire area and encourage neighbors to work together and take action in protecting their homes. The goal is for residents to join together and take actions to prepare themselves, their homes, and their properties against the threat of wildfire. Residents of Firewise Communities can sometimes get insurance discounts (the California FAIR program offers this). 

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To start and maintain a Firewise Community:

• A group of resident volunteers must create a board or committee to lead the effort.

• This group conducts a Risk Assessment for the neighborhood (which must be repeated every every 5 years).

• They create an Action Plan to identify activities to mitigate that risk (this must be updated every three years).

• They educate residents and organize outreach events to encourage community participation.

• The board/committee must also document volunteer hours and activities contributing to wildfire risk reduction.

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The Greenhorn Firewise Community (GFC) received recognition from Firewise USA ® on June 28, 2019. The GFC is one of thousands of certified Firewise USA ® communities across the nation, and more than 120 in Nevada County.

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How Are We Organized?

Since we are a large community, the original volunteers divided it into 15 sections, generally arranged around the private roads that branch off of Greenhorn. The GFC is led by a volunteer board consisting of representatives from the various sections (currently 7 of these have no representative on the board), as well as other interested residents. We welcome interested neighbors who would like to share their knowledge and skills to help make our community safer and more resilient. 

Keeping Our Firewise Community Recognition

The GFC must renew our Firewise recognition annually with the NFPA. As part of this process, we need to show that our residents are working to harden their homes and improve defensible space on their properties, as well as on common projects such as roadside clearing. Help us to meet this requirement by tracking your time and money spent on these activities. Keeping our recognition helps you and your neighbors get a discount on your homeowner's insurance.

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