Didn't want anyone to miss out on new items on the Firewise website. Our Spring 2010 How To Newsletter has been posted here with lots of info about our Firewise Communities/USA sites and a special them on youth education and engagement in wildfire safety.

Want to become a Firewise Communities/USA site, or help a neighborhood in your area achieve recognition? Download our new User Guide or order it from the Firewise Catalog for just the cost of shipping.

Finally, don't forget to visit our Events section to see what's going on around the country with wildfire safety education, conferences and exhibits. You can use this area to submit a link to your own event, too.

It's been an exciting time the last several weeks watching communities renew their commitment to wildfire safety by updating their Firewise status. We're still crunching numbers, but it looks like we are retaining at least 85% of all communities active in the program (as we did in 2008). The program has grown quite a bit and we're nearer now to 600 active communities, just after announcing that we broke the 500-community mark.

Winter's a great time to catch up on those courses you wanted to take on the Firewise Learning Center, renew your Firewise status, and learn how to Firewise your pets. All this and more in the latest issue of "Firewise How To!" Click here to read the latest and to subscribe to get this quarterly in your email inbox.