Honoring a Decade of Resilience, New Grant Funds Cobb Forest Citizen Scientists
- Shasta McBride
- Oct 14
- 3 min read
On September 12th, the community gathered to mark the 10th anniversary of the devastating 2015 Valley Fire.
Co-hosted by the Seigler Springs Community Redevelopment Association (SSCRA), Supervisor Jessica Pyska, the Cobb Area Council, and others, the event began with emergency tone alerts, prompting attendees to silence their devices. The ceremony itself was brief but moving, with speakers addressing the crowd in quick succession. The program traced the community’s journey from the initial incident response through relief, recovery, and lasting collaboration.
The commemoration recognized significant changes spurred by the fire, including new state fire standards and the revitalization of Indigenous land stewardship practices. A powerful moment was the dedication of a memorial plaque to honor the lives lost.
The gathering drew first responders—some traveling from the Port of San Francisco, Yolo, and Sonoma Counties—seeking closure. The ceremony paid tribute to these first responders, community representatives, and NGOs for their essential contributions to disaster response and economic resurgence. Official guests included Congressman Mike Thompson and representatives from Senator Mike McGuire and Assemblymember Cecilia Aguiar-Curry.
Watch video of the ceremony:
Read https://fireadaptednetwork.org/interview-with-magdalena-valderrama/ for SSCRA's perspective on how fire adaptation work has changed in Lake County
Ten Years of Fire Adaptation Work in Lake County
Fire Networks: Tell us a little about where you are currently in your journey of fire adaptation work. How did you get to where you are now?
Magdalena: As a wildfire survivor, I wanted us to do better than wait for the next fire. A third of our county’s population was displaced because of this particular fire alone. And as we slowly developed the capacity with our community to act on our own terms of recovery, I quickly found myself in a forest of fire-related organizations and acronyms! Making sense of which ones I actually needed took the better part of three years while my husband and I handled insurance paperwork, replenished our living situation, and pivoted around building a fire-wise housing cooperative. Meanwhile, participation in FAC Net really gave me the confidence to track down our county’s Community Wildfire Protection Plan and press persistently to get it updated. I’m really grateful for the doors that FAC Net opened for me in terms of the information and training you all made available. And then there were the resources, whether it was a COCO AIM grant supporting us in conducting home risk assessments and training a group of volunteers to do the same, or a a course with the Indigenous People’s Burning Network that forever changed how I understand our landscape and its people and how to realign with fire-adapted culture and healthy fire dependence. Read the whole article on FAC Net's website here
New Grant funds Cobb Forest Citizen Scientists
SSCRA has been awarded a $15,000 grant from the California Fire Foundation to field a team of "Citizen Scientists" to assist in the development of our new Cobb Community Wildfire Protection Plan.
This grant will support the development of the program, including training and field equipment ("ruggedized" data collection tablets), that will place local citizens in the field to "ground truth" data derived from state and national satellite sources. This will provide key input for the new Plan and make sure that we have an accurate picture of what is actually happening on the ground. This will let us make decisions about the most strategically important work to ensure that the Cobb Mt. Area continues to become "fire-adapted". A main objective of this program will be to increase the understanding of our local community, building a shared knowledge base about the status of the Cobb Area forest, including our vulnerability to wildfire and the most critical needs for tending. We will also be approaching local schools to explore student participation in the project.
We will be working in partnership with colleagues from the UC Davis Center for Community and Citizen Science to design and launch the program.
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