Cross-country cyclists in Palm Springs volunteer, help prevent fires

Forty volunteers from the Fuller Center Bicycle Adventure took a stop from their 10-week cross country bike trip to volunteer at a mobile home park for seniors.

The Fuller Center for Housing is an organization that helps find housing for low income people, the elderly, and veterans.

On Tuesday the group removed brush, trimmed trees, and built a fence at Ramon Mobile Home Park, which is a 55 and over community.

“It’s very important that the brush is gone, the residents can’t get out to do that themselves and it’s expensive for someone to come and do gardening, so they came in and removed brush, they repaired water lines for sprinklers, and put up the fence,” said Deborah Belleau, property manager at Ramon Mobile Home Park.

“We’re tearing down some old dilapidated type fencing and other structures that are attached next to the homes and doing some repairs and replacements of those,” said Ryan Iafigliola, founder of the Fuller Center Bicycle Adventure.

Removing brush and trimming trees not only makes the park look nicer, but it can also help in case of a fire.

“Fires are very serious, they are life threatening, if you get one fire the houses here are so close together that it’s going to spread, it’s going to impact a lot of lives so trimming trees back, getting them away from the home so if any kind of fire would start it isn’t as likely to spread and their is a lot less wood that close to the structure,” said Iafigliola.

“We all know that with mobile homes, if one goes there is a chance of a lot of them going especially if there is brush that is growing from one to another. There are seniors and handicapped people who live in this park, so we want to make sure that the egress and access to their properties is as easy as possible for them,” said Cindy Piper, vice president of the Desert Communities Fuller Center for Housing.

The Desert Communities Fuller Center for Housing, which helps people in the Coachella Valley was given a $1,000 check by the North American Retail Hardware Association.

The Fuller Center Bicycle Adventure continues all the way through August, they are hoping to raise $250,000 during the trip. That money would go into housing projects around the world.