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Sylva-based SCA team’s mission is to raise fire preparedness levels
By Justin Goble
A new team of volunteers from the Student Conservation Association has set up in Sylva to help with conservation efforts in the region.
Hannah Burgard, Sarah Osborn, Alison McCluskey and Jeff Dressler arrived last week to begin working on fire mitigation plans in counties surrounding the Great Smoky Mountains National Park. The project is part of the association’s effort to assist forest rangers in preparing Community Wildfire Protection Plans.
The association was started in 1957, and offers internship programs for high school and college students in parks and forests throughout the nation. Throughout its 50 years, SCA has allowed students to have a hand in conservation efforts.
Student Conservation Association volunteers, from left, Hannah Burgard, Jeff Dressler, Alison McClusky and Sarah Osborn recently arrived in Sylva to help with fire mitigation strategies in counties surrounding the Great Smoky Mountains National Park. Team members will visit residents in an effort to gather information about preparations for wildfires within communities, along with helping a nationwide emergency-mapping effort.– Herald photo by Justin Goble.
During their time in Western North Carolina, team members will visit residents to get information on their fire preparedness, which will help them develop fire mitigation strategies. The group will also compile information about roads and emergency services to use as part of a nationwide mapping project.
“We’re doing a GIS survey,” said Burgard, a volunteer from Wisconsin. “What they are trying across the country is to come up with one uniform system to map things. Once that’s done, forest rangers will able to see where everything is in case of a wildfire.”
“We just have until May to get our work done,” said Osborn, a volunteer from Michigan . “Hopefully in the future we’ll get more funds and be able to work in more of the counties throughout the region.”
Along with that, the team is hoping to hold meetings with community members and park rangers to discuss fire prevention measures.
“It’s definitely got an educational aspect to it,” Burgard said. “Hopefully in this whole process, people will get interested in learning ways to make their homes and their communities safer from fires.”
While many people in the mountains of WNC may not think about wildfires that often, Brugard said having a national park containing miles of woodland areas close by could be cause for alarm.
“Wildfires in the area around the park are a big concern,” Burgard said. “I think people just don’t realize how big of an issue it is.”
“If they even think about it, most people approach it with an ‘it won’t happen to me’ attitude,” Osborn said.
Given last year’s wildfires in California, which scorched thousands of acres of land and left many homeless, McClusky, a Chicago native, said it is a concern that people need to think about more and more.
“We found out in training that 2 percent of the time firefighters will not be able to get control of a blaze,” she said. “That may not sound like a lot, but those are the fires that end up doing the kind of damage that they had in California last summer.”
Through this effort, team members said they are hoping to get some hands-on experience in a field of interest while getting to experience life in Jackson County.
“It’s great to come to a new area,” Dressler, a Connecticut native, said. “You get to see a new place and meet a lot of new people while helping out with fire preparedness. The people we’ve met so far are really nice.” ”
“I wanted to get some experience with the Forest Service,” McClusky said. “It’s nice to get contact with that profession, since I want to get a government job working with the parks.”
“It’s a cool learning experience,” Osborn said. “It gets you out of your comfort zone. I don’t think there would be another way I could have an experience like this any other way.”
For more information about SCA programs, visit www.thesca.org.
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