Welcome! This Drive-Thru Audio Exhibit will teach you about the wildfire reduction efforts happening in your neighborhood! Please listen, learn, and enjoy!

Fillmore is a town in the Santa Clara River Valley in Ventura County about 25 miles from the Los Angeles County line, below San Cayetano Mountain, a peak of the Topatopa Mountains in the Los Padres National Forest. The Santa Clara River borders the town to the south, and Sespe Creek, a tributary of the Santa Clara River, borders to the west. For a town like Fillmore, wildfires are not a new occurrence.

Fillmore Fire Department Chief Keith Gurrola knows the town’s fire history first hand. “I grew up here, I worked for the Forest Service in this area before Ventura County Fire. So we've seen quite a few fires burned through. Yeah. We do have a history. The largest threats, again, are the fires that are coming with the east wind. They are either coming from interstate 5 or from Piru or on the opposite side of the valley coming in from Guiberson Road, that area.”

As you drive along Foothill Drive in North Fillmore, you might notice crews, including firefighters, working in the hillsides above Hunter and Morris Drives. They’re hard at work cutting down dried and overgrown vegetation, which acts as fuel for fire, so that in case a wildfire were to reach this hillside, there would be enough space between the brush and the first line of houses, keeping the fire from reaching the community. This is called creating defensible space. This fuel reduction work is a collaboration between the Fillmore Fire Department, the Ventura County Fire Department and the Ventura Regional Fire Safe Council.

This site’s fuels reduction application involves manual and mechanical treatment. This means that, due to the topography, size, and vegetation types within our treatment area, hand crews and machinery are being used to target hazardous and invasive vegetation. “Just because of the terrain, we have to go in by foot and use chainsaws and then drag the material out and chip it in place where we can. So we're attempting to, again, to reduce the overall amount of vegetation that's on the hillside, but leave the root structure intact. And that's very important. The area has seen some previous flooding during the heavy rainfall seasons. Luckily, those are far and few in between, but we don't want to completely kill the vegetation with herbicides in that location because then it could disturb the root structure.”

Root structures of plants are important on steep hillsides because the roots prevent erosion. The Fillmore Fire Department works alongside Ventura County Fire and CAL FIRE to protect the hillsides when fire does happen. But preparation for wildfire happens much earlier, and it’s not just up to the fire departments to make a community like Fillmore resilient from wildfire.

Wildfire preparedness is a community effort. While you watch these crews protect the community at a landscape level, it is up to resident’s like us to make sure our homes are prepared, as well. Damage to homes happens through direct flames reaching the home, radiant heat igniting flammable material within range, and embers blowing into home by getting through the vents, or igniting materials within five feet of the home, called Zone 0. When a wildfire might happen is unpredictable, which is why we need to prepare our homes now. 

Making those changes to your home is called home hardening. This includes upgrading your vents, cleaning your gutters, clearing the ground of dry leaves, and placing plants outside your Zone 0. Wider community efforts for wildfire preparedness are also available through a program called Firewise USA®. To learn more about what you can do to protect your home, visit VenturaFireSafe.org and check out our resources for home hardening, defensible space, and how to start a Firewise USA® Site in your neighborhood.

You may see more wildfire resiliency projects happening in Fillmore. While your friendly neighborhood nonprofit and fire department work on protecting your community, give us a hand by preparing your home! At Ventura Regional Fire Safe Council, we are here to help answer your questions about everything wildfire safety! Visit VenturaFireSafe.org. Thanks for listening!  

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Funding for this project was provided by the California Department of Forestry and Fire Protection’s (CAL FIRE) Wildfire Prevention Grants Program. This project is part of California Climate Investments, a statewide initiative that puts billions of Cap-and-Trade dollars to work reducing greenhouse gas emissions, strengthening the economy, and improving public health and the environment — particularly in disadvantaged communities.