Wildfire Mitigation with Team Rubicon
As part of the National Fire Protection Association's nationwide Wildfire Community Preparedness Day, the Town and CCAT hosted twelve volunteers from Team Rubicon, a veteran-led disaster response organization, for a weekend of wildfire mitigation work. Team Rubicon volunteers cleared brush across several priority areas across the island, selected by the Fire Department and the Maine Forest Service, to create fire breaks, increase defensible space, and improve access for emergency vehicles. A crew of twenty volunteers from the Greater Portland Council of Government's Resilience Corps, alongside a strong team of community volunteers, helped manage and remove the cut brush to maintain the integrity of the newly created fire breaks.
Sites
Deer Point
Deer Point is a major fire risk on the island because of its vegetative make up, its large stock of dead wood fuel, and its inaccessibility to emergency vehicles. Team Rubicon helped create a fire break and improve emergency access by cutting back softwood growth and dead wood along the trail to the shore.
Chebeague Island School
The crew limbed and removed softwood trees along the baseball field to increase the buffer between the school's recreational spaces and surrounding forest fuels.
Kids' Place
Team Rubicon created a shaded fuel break behind the kids' fenced play area, thinning softwood growth to reduce the risk of wildfire reaching the Kids' Place building and playground.
Transfer Station
Wood waste accumulation at the Transfer Station comes with a rising wildfire risk, with several instances of spontaneous combustion reported during the summers. To help protect against the spread of potential fire ignited at the brush dump, Team Rubicon cut back softwood growth along a section of the chip piles.
159 South Road
The crew performed wildfire risk reduction at one home as a residential demonstration project, modeling what adequate defensible space can look like in heavily wooded areas.