Kate Reagan Randive, Firewise Committee Chair, had this to share about the experience:
Skyline/Moongate is a Montclair Organized Neighborhood (MON) in the Piedmont Pines district — 38 single-family homes along Melville Lane, Totterdell Street, and the stretch of Skyline Boulevard from 9229 to 9536. We sit in a very high fire hazard severity zone, with wildland at our doorstep, and like a lot of our neighbors we’ve watched fire insurance get harder to keep every year.
A natural next step
Skyline/Moongate has been a tight MON for a long time, with a standing Emergency Preparedness Committee that meets regularly and knows how to organize its neighbors. Firewise had been on people’s minds for a while — the interest was there — but we needed a defined committee to actually get things moving. In August 2024, we stood one up as a sister group to Emergency Prep, and that’s when the pieces started coming together.
Joelle was the reason we got through
I can’t say this strongly enough: Joelle Fraser at the Oakland Firesafe Council is the reason our recognition happened. She was persistent, she helped us hold ourselves accountable to our own timeline, and she was genuinely easy to work with through every step — the risk assessment, the boundary map, the walk-through, the action plan, and the final application.
Our neighborhood walkabout was a highlight
Alongside Joelle, we were joined by Oakland Fire Vegetation Management Supervisor Adam Ball and Fire Inspector Edgar Molina-Perez. Walking the streets together, we found dozens of concrete ways we could educate and support our neighbors on home hardening and defensible space. That walk shaped a lot of what ended up in our plan.
Recognition and what’s next
We received our Firewise USA® recognition in September 2025 — about thirteen months from that first committee meeting. Our 2026-2028 three-year action plan focuses on the four required areas: education and outreach, home hardening, defensible space and fuel reduction, and evacuation planning. We’re leaning into quarterly reporting, an annual neighborhood walk, a community cleanup day using District 4’s green waste receptacles, and partnering with the Diablo Firesafe Council on a home-hardening demonstration.
The most exciting thing about this first year of recognition has been watching our neighbors act. We’ve seen a real wave of home hardening — households enclosing eaves, and several families replacing wood decks with composite. Those are exactly the kinds of investments that make our neighborhood measurably more resilient, and they’re what will keep showing up in our annual reports.
We’re a small MON, but we’re organized, we’re motivated, and we’re grateful to have a program — and a coordinator — that gave us a clear path to work on this together.
Kate Reagan Randive
Firewise Committee Chair, Skyline/Moongate