Some Common Sense Thoughts on Homes and Wildfires


DO NOT rely on your local fire protection district to save you and your house during a large wildfire event.  Such an event can have hundreds of fires burning at once driven by 60 mph winds; the last one in north Idaho occurred in 1910 and burned over 3,000,000 acres.  They can occur every 100 years or two years in a row; they can be larger or smaller (every summer the news reports out of control fires); nobody can predict the long term weather or their occurrence.  What is certain though, is in these big fire events any rural fire district will be overwhelmed quickly, and paradoxically, the longer this large event is postponed by successful firefighting efforts, the more intense it will be because of fuel build up.  Defensible space is scientifically proven to be effective, and you must take responsibility for protection of your property and the lives of your loved ones into your own hands.

While many people picture or assume wildfire is always a solid wall of flame, somewhat like an avalanche of snow that consumes everything in its path, this is usually not the case.  What is more common, especially in Wildland Urban Interface areas, is a wind driven fire, spreading sporadically by opportunistic seeking embers, riding the air currents.  Therefore, the way to defend a home against wildfire is twofold:

1. Keep flames at least 100 feet away by the use of defensible space.  Research has shown that at this distance flames from a wildfire will not have enough energy to ignite the typical walls in an urban home. This is why the carefully planned removal of much of the flammable vegetation within this zone results in a pleasing-to-the-eye area, known as survivable or defensible space. Flame lengths, which are as tall as 100’ in an out of control wildfire are reduced to a much more manageable length of two to five feet in this clean park-like setting.

 
• Once this defensible space is created, maintain it. If this is done correctly, the second year will be half as difficult as the first, while the third year will be only half as difficult as the second. After three years routine maintenance will be relatively easy.
   
• Since the objective is to create a healthy, open park-like setting, this often involves competitive wild grasses or other low vegetation spreading between the selected remaining plants. All one has to do is keep the playing field or ecosystem tipped in favor of the desired plants, and nature will do the rest.
   
2. Create an inner zone where these reduced intensity fires have no ability to ignite anything. This 30’ area should be "lean, green, and clean". Some suggested methods to accomplish this are as follows and all are common sense ways to deny successful landings for the opportunistic seeking embers:

 
• Do not have a cedar shake roof. For that matter do not have any roof rated less than class A or allow easily ignitable fuels, such as pine needles, to accumulate on it.
   
• Do not have open, dirty, cluttered wooden decks.  If there is a space between the bottom of the deck and the ground between one inch and three feet then keep this area free of debris.
   
• Do not openly stack firewood next to the walls in fire season. Either enclose the fire wood or delay wood getting till the fall.
   
• Do not plant flammable junipers next to the home's walls and under the eaves of the roof.
   
• Do keep at least a 30' wide watered lawn.  In reality this is not much area and is relatively easy to accomplish.  Eliminating flammable fuels next to the home is the single best method of preventing home loss to wildfire.
   
• Do keep up with the maintenance of the defensible space.  This is the second most important thing you can do.
   
• Do have neighborhood meetings to discuss fire safety.  In many cases these can be held in conjunction with road meetings and etc.  Collaborated with the neighbors and practice the old adage that every chain is only as strong as its weakest link.
   
3. An excellent publication on defensible space, wildfire, and related topics is Protecting and Landscaping Homes in the Wildland Urban Interface, available as a free downloadable document at the University of Idaho Extension.