By Mary O’KEEFE

Neighbors and community members spent Saturday cutting away dead and over grown limbs and clearing brush in the Upper Briggs Terrace area – all in volunteer service to keep their area safe.

Judy Turner, an Upper Briggs Terrace resident and member of the Crescenta Valley Fire Safe Council, helped organize the event.

“[The clean up] is about neighbor helping neighbor,” Turner said.

She, along with other residents, remembered how close the flames from the Station Fire came to their neighborhood. Saturday’s clean up – now an annual event – helps reduce the vegetation that can burn and also creates what firefighters call defensible space, the space where firefighters can make a stand against a blaze.

Saturday ended with a potluck dinner shared with neighbors after a hard days clearing.

  Mary Okeefe