We began our Firewise journey with an initial organizing meeting on October 3, 2025 at the home of resident Stan Weisner. The purpose of this meeting was to form our “Ad hoc Firewise committee,” which then coordinated our further efforts.
Once the committee had distributed the individual Wildfire Risk Assessment questionnaire via email to our residents on October 28, 2025, it took about six weeks and multiple email reminders to gather responses from at least one-third of the 61 homes in our Montclair Organized Neighborhood (MON-13 of Piedmont Pines Neighborhood Association PPNA).
Initially we worked with Christophe Marcant to distribute questionnaires and gather and analyze the responses. Eventually, Joelle Fraser became the primary coordinator of our efforts. Without the help of Christophe and the on-going support of Joelle, our path toward Firewise recognition would have been much more difficult. From the questionnaire responses, Christophe and Joelle prepared our draft Assessment document, which our committee reviewed and updated between January 23, 2026 and March 4, 2026, when our final assessment was forwarded to Joelle.
The completion of the assessment enabled Joelle to schedule our neighborhood walk-through on March 26, 2026, with participation by Fire Marshall Devin White and other representatives from the Oakland Fire Department, Jessie Godfrey, Cheryl Drinkwater of Diablo Firewise and several residents from our MON-13 Castle Courts Neighborhood.
Fire Chief Damon Covington sent his letter of support the next day, March 27, 2026.
Thereafter, we spent about 30 days developing and fine-tuning our 3-year action plan. As our final step, from April 29 to June 2, 2026 we gathered the past year’s hours and money spent by our residents on wildfire prevention-related efforts in order to complete the Firewise application, which Joelle and I submitted on June 9, 2026. Our application was approved June 12, 2026.
Overall, our process took a little over eight months, from October 3, 2025 to June 12, 2026. In hindsight we might have saved 4-5 weeks if we had gathered the hours and money spent by our neighborhood right from the start, but at least we learned what will be needed to renew and continue our Firewise USA ® ️ recognition in 2027 and beyond.
Howard Neal
Chairperson
Ad hoc MON-13 Firewise Committee