A team from the Virginia Department of Forestry (VDOF) was on Wintergreen Mountain Tuesday. They're checking to see if the fire department has put thousands of dollars in grant money to good use, preventing wildfires.
Wintergreen has the thumbs up by the VDOF for the work that has been done, and it all goes back to a destructive storm that happened in 2003.
A team from the National Firewise Community is on the ground, and inspecting property up and down Wintergreen Mountain in Nelson County.
"What usually happens is embers will blow in during a fire and hit those vulnerable points in your home, gutters, decks, roofs, porches," said Firewise Communities Program Manager Michele Steinberg.
Sixty different lots on the mountain were identified initially as being a severe fire threat to the entire community. Four years and about $21,000 in grants later, only eight troubled lots remain.
Chief John Miller with VDOF stated, "The driving force is to really do whatever we can proactively to limit the potential damage to woodland homes communities."
The main issue on the mountain is with the large amount of downed Virginia pine trees. They fell eight years ago when the remnants of Hurricane Isabel ripped through central Virginia.
"It was a lot of rain and of course that weakened the root system and the wind put them down," said Chief Curtis Sheets with Wintergreen Fire and Rescue.
The main goal is to prevent a massive wildfire from breaking out on the mountain and wiping out about 4,000 homes.
Sheets stated, "If a fire became out of control down here, it's going to the mountain which is an area where we would really have a hard time defending."
When this first started, property owners were notified if their land had issues. If they didn't fix the problem, Wintergreen Fire and Rescue took care of it and sent them the bill.
