Thursday, November 6, 2003 the Mountain Communities Fire Safe Council participated in a public meeting with the Mountain Area Safety Taskforce (MAST) and 3rd District Supervisor Jim Venable to discuss the recent fires in San Bernardino County and their implication for threats to the Hill. Approximately 250 people attended the meeting at the Idyllwild School Auditorium, an extremely large turnout for this small community.

Local officials who were speakers included Jim Venable, 3rd District Supervisor; Norm Walker of the USDA Forest Service's San Bernardino National Forest; Tom Tisdale, Riverside County fire chief; Tim Gustafson, Idyllwild Fire Protection District fire chief; and Gene Zimmerman, San Bernardino National Forest Supervisor. Garrick Lahoda, Executive Director of the Mountain Communities Fire Safe Council moderated the program.

Supervisor Venable assured everyone in the audience that the county would do everything it could to help protect Idyllwild and the surrounding communities from the fire devastation experienced by San Bernardino and San Diego Counties.

Norm Walker described his experience as incident commander at the Old Fire in the San Bernardino and Lake Arrowhead areas. Walker stressed the need for homeowners to clean up pine needles and make their properties as fire safe a possible. Walker had expressed concern that when he returned to Idyllwild, he was shocked at the number of pine needles distributed by the Santa Anas and the fact that hardly any homeowners had cleaned them up.

Tim Gustafson reiterated the message that we need to protect our community and do year-round clean up in our yards not just in the spring when the inspections occur.

Dave Barreira, spokesman for Southern California Edison (SCE), explained the purpose of the recent protective outages during periods of high winds and how SCE is increasing its own tree removal efforts.

Final speaker, Gene Zimmerman, described the firefighter efforts to contain the Old Fire. He said, "It is incredible to tell you we lost 1,000 homes. But the firefighting community thought it was a large success. Typically, one lost home is a failure. There were moments when I resigned myself that we'd lose all of Crestline, Running Springs, Green Valley Lake and Lake Arrowhead." He advised, "Do whatever you can do to fire proof this community as soon as possible."