As part of Noozhawk’s Nov. 3 election coverage, we are publishing Q&As with board candidates for some special districts and education districts, including the Montecito Fire Protection District.
Candidate answers may have been lightly edited for spelling and formatting, but are otherwise presented as they were submitted.
The Montecito Fire Protection District is an independent fire department for the Montecito area, with two stations crewed by firefighting and paramedic personnel at all times.
The department also has its own dispatch center, fire marshal, and administrative staff.
Four candidates are running for three seats on the Board of Directors, which has five members.
Candidate John Abraham ‘Abe’ Powell
Noozhawk: Why are you running for the Montecito Fire Protection District Board of Directors?
Abe Powell: I am running for a third term on the Montecito Fire Board to help protect my community. The frequency and intensity of natural disasters have doubled and then doubled again in my lifetime. As Maeve Juarez of Montecito Fire reported on Oct. 8: “Wildfires are getting bigger, longer and killing more people than ever before.”
To address this challenge, we need to change the way we approach preparedness, response and recovery as a community and as a society. I am running for the Fire Board to help Montecito implement this change, building on years of work to unite the community and our fire service around our common interest in reducing the risk of disasters, helping each other survive when they strike, and supporting each other through the recovery process.
Noozhawk: What personal and/or work experience would you bring to the organization?
Powell: For the last 24 years, I have been community organizing to build a cooperative, inclusive approach to resilience in Santa Barbara and Montecito. I represented the Mountain Drive Community (MDCA) for five years as its association president and served for five years as a volunteer firefighter with the Mountain Drive Volunteer Fire Company.
After the Tea Fire burned 210 homes in Montecito, I served two years as the Director of Relief Services for the MDCA and I helped hundreds of neighbors recover from disaster and loss.
That is when I first decided to run for the Montecito Fire Board. I knew we needed the whole community to step up to the challenge we were facing and, in 2012, I won a seat on the Board. I have served as a Director at Montecito Fire for the last eight years, helping to prepare the community for and respond to the wildfires and other natural disasters we have experienced.
In 2018, I co-founded the Santa Barbara Bucket Brigade to help the community recover from the debris flow and to spearhead a countywide resilience-building campaign rooted in my work here in Montecito.
Noozhawk: What do you see as the top issue facing the district right now, and how would you address it?
Powell: We must build community preparedness and resilience up to a level that is commensurate with the threat we now face. We all saw what can happen here in Montecito over the last two years.
This year, 4 million acres of California have burned already and peak fire season has just begun in Southern California. Six of the largest wildfires in California history have burned since the Thomas Fire was stopped on our doorstep in 2017. Our climate has changed, and the threat is clear, present and deadly.
The time for action is now and I have been working diligently to prepare the community for this moment for the last quarter century. The need for strong, experienced community leadership has never been greater and I have stepped up again to help provide it.
Noozhawk has published election Q&As with other Montecito Fire Protection District board candidates including:
Click here to read Noozhawk’s coverage in the Election 2020 section.