More than 250 community leaders converged Wednesday at Sonoma State University to mark the launch of a regional organization created to unite the public and private sectors in their efforts to help North Bay counties recover from the deadly wildfires that have ravaged much of the area.

If we’re gonna go ahead and rebuild at the rate and pace that people are pushing us to, we have to make sure that we do it as a collective community. And if we don’t, we will have challenges going forward.

Government officials from Sonoma and Napa counties, labor leaders, businesspeople, representatives from environmental groups and others gathered to hear about the new nonprofit, Rebuild North Bay, and its leader, James Lee Witt, a former director of the Federal Emergency Management Agency. The organization’s goal is to help the area collaboratively address the gargantuan, years-long challenge of rebuilding.

The meeting provided a rare opportunity for a vast cross-section of North Bay leaders to start a public dialogue about how they will work in concert to respond to the historic devastation and plan for rebuilding.

Read the full article on wildfire recovery in the North Bay by J.D. Morris at The Press Democrat