Are You Prepared For Fire Season?

5/4/2022 (Permalink)

It’s essential to improve your home’s chance of surviving a wildfire. Defensible space is the buffer you create between a building on your property and the grass, trees, shrubs, or any wild land area that surround it. This space is needed to slow or stop the spread of wildfire and it helps protect your home from catching fire—either from embers, direct flame contact or radiant heat. Proper defensible space also provides firefighters a safe area to work in, to defend your home.

Having an ember-resistant zone is designed to keep fire or embers from igniting materials that can spread the fire to your home.  The following provides guidance for this zone, which may change based on the regulation developed by the Board of Forestry and Fire Protection.

• Use hard landscape like gravel, pavers, concrete and other noncombustible mulch materials.
• Remove all dead and dying weeds, grass, plants, shrubs, trees, branches and vegetative debris (leaves, needles, cones, bark, etc.); Check your roofs, gutters, decks, porches, stairways, etc.
• Remove all branches within 10 feet of any chimney or stovepipe outlet
• Limit plants in this area to low growing, non woody properly watered and maintained plants