VIDEO: Nearly a decade after the Table Rock Fire scorched more than 2,000 acres in the Boise foothills, one neighborhood has been working for years to prevent a wildfire tragedy. Warm Springs Mesa, situated on a hillside where fire risk is high, is home to the MESA program, an acronym for Mesa Emergency Safety Actions. The program began after the 2016 fire, which was caused by fireworks and quickly spread through dry, invasive grasses.
โWe worked to kind of break the Mesa into multiple pods,โ said K.C. Shedden, president of the Warm Springs Mesa Neighborhood Association and the communityโs Firewise coordinator. โKnowing your neighbors, knowing the issues on your street, if you have elderly or people with children or medical needs, all of that helps prepare your home.โ MESA collaborates with Firewise, a nationally recognized fire safety initiative that emphasizes the importance of defensible space and home hardening to mitigate fire risk.
The Mesa community has been divided into small groups of homes, called pods. Each pod has a captain responsible for communication and coordination during emergencies. The approach was designed not only to improve organization, but also to reduce confusion when time is limited in emergency situations. โFire runs uphill and walks down, but it runs uphill, and time is of the essence,โ Rodney Haars, MESAโs communication coordinator, told KTVB. Haars estimates that nearly 90% of the neighborhood is now actively involved.
