Education & Cooperation in Wildfire Prevention and
Evacuation Safety
When the Joy Lake Road Corridor was proposed for development as a medium-density neighborhood, numerous developers purchased large parcels and ultimately did good jobs with their subdivision designs. Certainly we are all happy with the overall ambiance of the area. However, in hindsight the parceling of our neighborhood was akin to an Oklahoma land-grab.
We have several homogeneous subdivisions that are governed by Home Owner’s Associations (HOA’s) that attempt to hold their residents to an agreed upon standard of excellence. Usually an HOA is clearly defined by an obvious grouping of properties, but our neighborhood also has a couple non-homogeneous subdivisions (think of them as “checkerboard associations”). We also have small subdivisions that were developed without a governing HOA at all, as well as a few remaining large parcels that have existed for decades, some of which still hold the potential to be subdivided. These organizational anomalies are merely a nuisance, in that CC&R’s are not consistent throughout our neighborhood.
However, the major issue in the Galena Forest planning was the omission of a management structure for wildfire risk in a Wildland Urban Interface (WUI) neighborhood! To address that omission, Truckee Meadows Fire & Rescue (TMFR, aka TMFD), the Nevada Division of Forestry (NDF), and numerous Galena Forest residents, came together to form the “Galena Forest Community” (GFC), which is recognized by Firewise USA (a community support division of NFPA) as a neighborhood actively involved in wildfire prevention education and evacuation safety for its residents.
The GFC boundary lines were designed by TMFR, based on the topography of the land we occupy. There were neither political nor financial motives involved in its design — just consolidation of our Community into what can be considered a single wildfire management unit.
The mandate for the GFC is Education and Communty cooperation on all things pertaining to wildfire. To that end we will assist our professional firefighters by helping distribute educational material on wildfire prevention and evacuation safety.
Email will be the preferred method of contact, as it is cost-free. When needed, our group of all-volunteer Ambassadors will also assist in hand-distributing material. The GFC will operate with professional oversight provided by our partners to ensure the information we disseminate is current, accurate, and relevant to our Community.
The GFC is not an enforcement agency; we are champions for wildfire safety for the benefit of all our residents.
As important as it is for all of us to be knowledgeable of wildfire risks/prevention and evacuation safety procedures, under the banner of cooperation is where we find the hard work of our Community’s mandate — maintaining defensible space. As we witnessed with the two arson fires in August 2022, defensible space is our paramount concern when it comes to mitigating wildfire risk. Those two fires would have been much worse if not for the quick response by TMFR, but also if not for the defensible space that kept the flames from doing more damage than they did. Our professional firefighters can’t say enough about maintaining adequate defensible space, and the GFC will echo their words.
The defensible space section of this website will always have the most up-to-date information regarding recommendations, as well as a link to a list of UNR Extension trained, local, and licensed landscape contractors. In addition, our firefighters are willing to advise our residents, at no cost, on defensible space needs. GFC Ambassadors will also be available to provide the educational material we have available for distribution, or to help you navigate the web for relevant material.
A few notes to remember: Nobody in the GFC acts alone where wildfire safety is concerned — One resident's neglect or mistake will have consequences for us all — Please, everybody do no less than your own part, and we will all benefit.
