The NWACA Wildfire Prevention Committee is organizing small portions of the NWACA neighborhood into street-level segments to focus on making homes in these areas fire adapted, minimizing their risk in a time of wildfire. In coordination with the Austin Fire Department (AFD) Wildfire Division, we're informing neighbors about how wildfires and ember storms affect us and how to harden our homes against them, using a national program called Firewise. AFD has named these small segments of the neighborhood "pods," and the local coordinator of a pod is called a "Fireplug."
Several areas of NWACA - Meadow Mountain, Lakewood Village, and perhaps others - have been working to be Firewise communities for several years, and they have made terrific progress in removing risks to their homes. To protect the rest of NWACA, we need many more pods organized and working on hardening their homes. To do that, we need many more Fireplugs who can coordinate the dissemination of information, connect individual homeowners to risk assessors, organize pod activities such as wildfire fuel removal days, and handle questions about the overall NWACA effort.
If you are willing to learn more and get involved, please review the Wildfire Prevention files in the Archive under the Resources section of this web site. See especially the file named Fireplug FAQ.