Protecting Your Home from Wildfire

Step 3: Stay on guard with firewise landscaping and maintenance

1. Create a safety zone or fire break around your home.

Reduce the amount of fuel immediately surrounding your home. The safety goal of landscaping and maintenance is very simple. Reduce the amount of fuel immediately surrounding your home. However, this does not mean your landscape has to be barren. Some plants are more fire resistive than others. One of the most important things any wildland homeowner can do is to create a safety zone or fire break around the house using these fire resistive plants.

"There was still some brush," explained one resident whose home was spared during a wildland fire, "that was potentially close enough that could have caused my house to go up if I hadn't taken it out. Just keeping that perimeter wide and keeping it free and the grass down very, very low, I think, is what saved my home. It gave the firefighters the perimeter that they needed to get up in here and do whatever defense they could do to help. So at least they had some room to work."

Your safety zone can consist of numerous varieties of plants, including grasses, border plantings, flowers and vegetables. Check with your local fire officials about the best species for your area.

In most areas, a safety zone should be cleared away from your home for a distance of not less than 30 feet. As the slope of the lot increases, additional clearance as far out as 100 feet may be necessary.

Clearance also depends on vegetative conditions that provide ladder fuels that enable fire to climb into trees. Trees and shrubs are fine, as long as dead or low-hanging branches are removed and the height of ground vegetation is controlled.

Be sure to remove all tree limbs around your chimney, as well as any dead branches that may hang over the roof. Accumulated leaves, needles, and other dead vegetation should also be removed.

Beyond 100 feet from the house, dead wood and older trees should be removed or thinned. Consult with your local fire officials for specific guidelines appropriate for your location. Keep an eye on any limbs that may come in contact with power lines. If you're not equipped to trim them yourself, call the power company and let them know about the hazard.

2. Sweep your gutters, eaves and roof regularly.

Keep your roof clear. When it comes to routine maintenance, remember to sweep your gutters, eaves, and roof on a regular basis, especially during the hot, dry weather of the fire season . Tinder-dry needles and leaves are a fire waiting to happen.

3. Stack firewood well away from your home or outbuildings.

Although it's very convenient to stack firewood under the porch or the eaves, it's not in your best interest to do so. To say the least, you're inviting trouble. Sparks from a grass fire can ignite firewood and quickly spread inside. Stack your firewood well away from anything that is combustible, including fences and outbuildings.

4. Avoid using outdoor incinerators for household trash.

Outdoor incinerators or burning barrels for household trash are illegal in many areas of the country because they generate wind-blown sparks. If they are allowed, a permit is usually required, so you need to check with your local fire protection agency about laws and ordinances.

5. Install smoke detectors.

Install as many smoke detectors as local regulations require and ask your fire officials to help you plan and rehearse a home fire escape drill. Regular home fire drills can save your family in an emergency.

6. Have ample safety exits in case of fire.

Your home should have at least two ground level doors to use as safety exits in case of fire, and each room should have at least two means of escape, including a door and a window leading to the outside. This is especially true in bedrooms.

Do these things and you have an excellent chance of protecting your home from wildfire. If you implement these ideas, especially clearing the safety zone around your house and installing a fire-resistant roof, you have an excellent chance of protecting your home and family against wildfire. But can these simple precautions really yield such dramatic results? Yes. In fact, the real-life experiences of those who have done these things seem just short of miraculous. Consider what they have to say after actually facing the threat of devastating fires:

"You know, each year I'd taken an ax," said one homeowner, "and cut out the brush from around the house in order to make it easy to take the cheap grass out with a heavy-duty weed-eater, and then every year I just kept increasing that distance out from around the house, never knowing how much was going to be enough. You've got to keep that brush clear away from your home so that the fire doesn't have any chance to get up against the side of your house."
Another woman was home alone with her children when the fire approached. She said:

"The smoke seemed to build up quite a bit, and then I noticed about ten fire engines coming up the street, and I ran out with the children and said, 'What should I do?', and they said, 'As quickly as possible, evacuate the house.' I looked down at the house, and there were about 200-foot flames almost surrounding the house, and I was sure at that time that the house was gone. But a few months before the fire, we heard that you should make sure the sagebrush is cleared away from the house, and my husband just thought, 'Well, we might start doing that in case there is a fire.'"
This is beautiful country. It's a privilege and a pleasure to live here. Using the knowledge in this document, you can not only protect your own property and the safety of your neighbors, but preserve the resources, the wildlife, and the natural beauty that belong to everyone.