Kaiser Permanente Donates $500K To Rebuild Fire-Ravaged Park

WINDSOR, CA — A $500,000 grant from Kaiser Permanente will help rebuild and redesign a wildfire-ravaged Sonoma County park, the Sonoma County Regional Parks Foundation announced.

Foothill Regional Park in Windsor was the front line in the fight to contain the Kincade Fire of October 2019. Firefighters snaked miles of hoses through the park's woodlands and bulldozed fire breaks in its open spaces. Their efforts kept the fire from burning through adjacent subdivisions and into the town. However, 95 percent of the park was burned or damaged, including 4 miles of trails, eight trail bridges and a 40-foot bridge that provides access to the park’s backcountry, the Sonoma County Regional Parks Foundation said.

The funding from Kaiser Permanente will allow Sonoma County Regional Parks to renovate the 211-acre Foothill Regional Park with a new "climate-adaptive" design to make it more resilient to future wildfires and offer greater protection to surrounding neighborhoods, the foundation said.

At Foothill, this includes replacing wooden infrastructure like retaining walls and footbridges with fireproof materials like metal or stone, or replacing plastic culverts with metal ones.

It also means introducing new features that support firefighting, like buried water lines to enable fire crews to access water from the park’s three ponds and redesigning some trails with cleared borders to accommodate fire-truck or bulldozer access without damaging sensitive ecological and historical resources.

"We are deeply grateful to Kaiser Permanent for this generous grant," said Melissa Kelley, executive director of the Sonoma County Regional Parks Foundation. "Rebuilding and strengthening the parks damaged by wildfire is a top priority for the Foundation, especially through funding programs that support at-risk community members, seniors and youth, and enhance the social networks that are so crucial to a community’s disaster resiliency.

The grant funding from Kaiser Permanente will be matched with $50,000 in individual donations to the Sonoma County Regional Parks Foundation for fire recovery, a $15,000 donation from the Rotary Club of Coronado and facilitated by the Rotary Club of Windsor, and revenue from the Measure M parks sales tax approved by Sonoma County voters in 2018.

Read the full announcement here.