2020 North American Wildfire Season

On Sept. 29, CDP announced nearly $3.3 million in wildfire recovery grants from our 2020 funds including the following:

• $250,000 to the Humboldt Area Foundation from the California Wildfires Recovery Fund to subgrant to local organizations serving the most marginalized populations in their four-county service area significantly affected by last season’s fires. A portion of these funds will support local Indigenous communities most disproportionately affected by the fires and have limited access to resources. Some funding for this grant comes from the CDP COVID-19 Response Fund to support recovery from the layered effects of multiple disasters on these communities.
• $150,000 from the California Wildfires Recovery Fund to the Northern California Indian Development Council to assist two Native American tribes with developing pilot emergency response plans to better prepare for future disasters and other emergencies. This work creates a template for California tribes to create emergency response plans and provides technical assistance and consulting services to assist them with tailoring the projects to their needs as necessary.
• The National Fish and Wildlife Federation received $250,000 from our Colorado Wildfires Recovery Fund to help communities restore natural resources, particularly river and stream corridors; water quality and essential wildlife habitat significantly affected by the 2020 Colorado wildfires. It will include areas in Grand County damaged considerably by the East Troublesome and Williams Fork fires. The project will also assist preparation and mitigation efforts in other areas of western Colorado currently without active forest management activities.
• The Latino Community Fund of Washington State received $214,000 through our Disaster Recovery Fund to sustain its work with local grassroots community organizations supporting the Latinx community affected by the 2020 wildfires. Outreach takes place at community centers, schools, churches, parks and other community hubs as defined by community leaders.
• Also from the Disaster Recovery Fund, The Hearth received a $15,000 rapid response grant awarded in November of 2020 to support the Compassionate Listening Project, which organizes, trains, equips and deploys local community members to provide high-quality, neighbor-to-neighbor, emotional care to the diverse residents of Southern Oregon suffering from fire disasters. The Hearth developed these training materials and programs to be replicated in other communities.

Check out the full list of CDP grantees here. Grants from other organizations in support of the 2020 wildfire season include:

• The Gordon and Betty Moore Foundation made a $3.2 million donation to the X Prize Foundation to support a global XPRIZE competition to drive innovation and hardware able to rapidly detect and extinguish wildfires. The Foundation also provided a $1.2 million donation to the Windward Fund in support of accelerating development and deployment of a wildfire management and evacuation platform in two high-risk, low-income Northern California regions and to enable rich data exchange with early detection sensors, satellite imaging, fire spread models, vegetation/fuel models and community notification.
• The Boeing Company Charitable Trust gave $500,000 to the Windward Fund to support a project that builds on findings that using forest slash to create biofuels with carbon capture is economical — and would expand California’s ability to mitigate wildfire risk. Specifically, this project will examine the institutional and regulatory barriers to using forest thinning to create lumber products and biofuel with carbon capture. In addition, the project will identify revenue streams that could speed up and expand wildfire mitigation efforts, and work with stakeholders to achieve social buy-in for sound forest management and carbon capture. Boeing also donated $200,000 to provide food assistance in states where significant numbers of the company’s employees live and work. $100,000 was given to Northwest Harvest in Washington, and $50,000 apiece to the Oregon Food Bank and Redwood Empire Food Bank in California.
• The Pacific Life Foundation made $125,000 in donations to fire relief efforts, including $50,000 to the American Red Cross; $50,000 to the California Community Foundation’s Wildfire Relief Fund; and $25,000 to the California Fire Foundation’s Wildfire Relief.
• The Seattle Foundation provided $20,000 in grants towards wildfire relief. $15,000 in two grants to the Community Foundation of North Central Washington and another $5,000 to the United Way of Whitman County.

FEMA has provided millions of dollars in assistance through 82 major disaster and fire management declarations. Most of these declarations are for fire management and don’t have any funding listed, however, there are three major disaster declarations:

• DR-4558 was issued on Aug. 22 for 19 areas in California, mostly for Individual and Public Assistance, though five of those areas only received Public Assistance designations. As of Dec. 7, 2,750 applications for individual assistance had been approved for a total of $18.2 million in obligations.
• DR-4562 was issued on Sept. 15 for 20 regions in Oregon. 12 regions received only Public Assistance while the remainder received both Public and Individual Assistance. As of Dec. 7, 2,824 applications for individual assistance had been approved for a total of $28.5 million obligated, along with $410,308 in public assistance.
• DR-4569 was issued on Oct. 16 for 12 areas across California after further fires burned across the state. Ten areas received both individual and public assistance designations, while two were designated for public assistance only. As of Dec. 7, 239 applications for individual assistance had been approved for a total of $3.4 million in obligations.