January 2026 Newsletter

Hello Neighbors, and Happy 2026!

 

While every year is different, there is still a rhythm to the year—especially when you live on the land. So if you’ve been on our newsletter email list for a while, you will see familiar topics—always good reminders! But we’ll also add timely information based on weather and what’s happening in the county and our neighborhood. And if you’re new to the neighborhood—or just to the newsletters, welcome--and we hope this information will be helpful to you.

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Over the course of the year, we’ll send along information about topics ranging from home hardening, defensible space, evacuation planning, go bags, and more. As a reminder, we have the year divided into quarters, with three newsletters per quarter:

 

• November-January: General Knowledge and Planning

• February-April: Preparing Your Home and Surrounding Property

• May-July: Readiness for Fire Season

• August-October: Situational Awareness and Safety

 

There is always work to be done, and with the holidays behind us, this is a good time to assess your current situation and begin to plan and prepare for the coming year. And our hearts go out to those fleeing and fighting the fires in Southern California.

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Free Site Visits and Workshops

This is a great time of year to get some free, expert advice so you can work on your defensible space and home hardening before fire season. Here are three opportunities.

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Defensible Space Advisory Visit (DSAV). If you haven’t already, you owe it to yourself to take advantage of this free program. A trained advisor will visit your property and provide you with advice and a written report on what you can do to help your home survive a wildfire. Two members of the Greenhorn Firewise board are trained to do this. It’s not punitive in any way and the information is shared with no one but you. To schedule a visit, contact Paul Tebbel at (916) 215-6172.

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Prescribed Burn Evaluation Site Visit. Interested in prescribed burning? The Nevada County Resource Conservation District provides site visits to evaluate whether prescribed fire is a good tool for you to meet your objectives and needs. If you think your property would benefit from a prescribed burn, and you have more than one acre, sign up for a FREE Prescribed Burn Site Visit. They will also be setting up hands-on workshops in the near future.

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Wildfire Ready Home Workshop. This workshop identifies defensible space and home hardening actions that work together as a system to improve a home’s wildfire survival chances. The checklist is becoming a new insurance industry standard for insurance discounts and has the same requirements as CALFIRE assessments. The first session is full, but you can register now to be on the waiting list for the next one.

 

Winter Projects

Here are a couple of areas you might want to look at if you have a bit of down time during winter weather…

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Project Planning. Explore the online resources above and create a checklist of things you can do to improve the safety of your home and property, and to plan for emergencies. Don’t try to tackle everything at once, but prioritize and start to take action. Some things are quick and easy (like signing up for CodeRed and finding your “Zone” number). Others take time, but can be worked on over the winter (like creating a family emergency plan). Others need to be done later in the year (like taking down tall grass and clearing needles from your roof), but it’s good to have a plan you can work from.

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Home Inventory. In the unfortunate event that you lose your home to fire, have flood damage, or are robbed, an accurate home inventory is crucial to getting a fair and prompt settlement from your insurance company. Your phone is a great tool for this—you can use photos and/or video, or a home inventory app. Make sure to save it in the cloud or on a portable hard drive or thumb drive kept somewhere besides your house. Here are a few links with more information:

• Forbes Advisor: You Really Need a Home Inventory

• California Department of Insurance: Home Inventory Guide

• Insurance Information Institute: How to Create a Home Inventory

 

Important Papers. Ideally you should also have important papers digitized and saved to the cloud or a portable hard drive or thumb drive. You could also make paper copies and store them somewhere away from your home. Make sure to revisit and update them at least annually.

• “Safeguard Critical Documents and Valuables” (Federal Emergency Management Agency, FEMA)

• “Important Documents for Emergency Preparedness” (Just Great Lawyers)

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Help Us Keep Our Firewise Recognition (and Insurance Discount)

To remain a recognized Firewise Community we need to show an investment into home hardening and defensible space. Every resident can help by logging the time and money they spend working on their home, property, and shared space such as roadsides. This includes everything from cleaning your gutters and roof, raking, and burning; purchase of a chainsaw or other tools; gas for your chainsaw; dumpster rentals or dump fees and gas expenses for green waste; and more. You can log any time and as many times as you want to, and it’s a bit easier to do this monthly or right after you do the work, rather than waiting until the deadline in November.

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Join Our Firewise Efforts!

A successful Firewise Community depends on the active involvement of as many residents and property owners as possible. Can you take a more active role in helping our community be safer from wildfire? We (your neighbors) are looking for additional interested neighbors to help with projects and/or to serve on the board. The time commitment is relatively minor and we’d love to get more folks involved. Contact us at greenhornfirewiseboard@gmail.com