About

EMBER Skeptics

After the Feb 11th, 2025 EMBER presentation, Bill and Jane collected emails from like-minded neighbors who had made Public Comments to the city Council. They began writing to them in a Newsletter style email, addressing them as “EMBER Skeptics”. Over time the list expanded to over 400 readers.

We helped launch AFPFS.org (Alliance For Practical Fire Solutions), but then later left to work independently as EMBER Skeptics.

We have attended every EMBER Council meeting and workshop, every California State Board of Forestry Zone 0 meeting, corresponded with the Berkeley Fire Department and city Council, and read numerous newspaper articles and scientific peer-reviewed studies on the topic of fire safety.

With our help, EMBER Skeptics readers have written many Public Comments to both Berkeley and the Board of Forestry. Besides our readers, we are in close contact with an inner circle of supporters from our neighborhood as well as down south in Los Angeles. This inner circle has created and distributed flyers multiple times in the pursuit of raising awareness about fire safety and also potential lead contamination from disrupting the soil immediately surrounding our older mid-century homes.

Last of all, Jane is also a member of the UCLA Sustainability Department’s Defensible Space Group - attending every meeting since it was formed in mid-2025 - hearing presentations and thoughts from recognized fire science experts and involved agencies and organizations, along with a motivated group of other civic-minded Californians.

WHY US? - Meet the Founders

Retired in 2007 from our careers as computer scientists, Jane and Bill are oriented towards problem solving and can blame our mothers on raising us to be civic-minded. We spent over 13 years doing wildfire emergency preparedness work and helping our community as volunteers — ham radio emergency communications, community alert networks serving sixteen hundred households — in Topanga Canyon, one of the highest fire-risk communities in Los Angeles County. We know what real fire safety work looks like. And when Berkeley adopted this ordinance, we expected to see it, but found it problematic and were skeptical that it was the best solution.

As volunteers in Topanga, representing our community with government agencies, the Fire Department and utility companies, we learned a lot about the process of fire safety. We attended the Woolsey Fire Recovery meetings in Malibu to hear about preparation, evacuation, and survival from homeowners and fire fighters (professional as well as volunteer) . Ultimately starting a website (LocalScoop.org), writing a Newsletter to 800 subscribers that includes local schools and our Town Council, and hosting a Private Nextdoor Group dedicated to sharing first-hand on the ground emergency information as well as agency alerts (700+ members and still growing). We continue to support all those outlets today from afar - just not as intensely.

Two and a half years ago we moved to the Berkeley Hills to be close to our daughter who has started a family. Every Friday we get to babysit our granddaughter and share the natural beauty that surrounds us. We hope to continue this way in an environment where we can feel safe.

Jane Terjung - B.S. Math/Computer Science, UCLA 1980

Bill Naylor - PhD Computer Science, UCLA 1977