Wildfire Preparedness Is Up to All of Us, Says Forest Service
Press release from the U.S. Forest Service:
The USDA Forest Service Pacific Southwest Region (Region 5) is proud to once again partner with the California Department of Forestry and Fire Prevention (CAL FIRE), and partners across the State, reminding communities and the public that live and work within wildland and forested areas about importance, especially this pandemic emergency, of preparing their homes and properties for wildfire.
“Preparedness is key to California residents reducing their exposure and risks to destructive wildfires,” said Anthony Scardina, Deputy Regional Forester for Region 5. “We stand shoulder to shoulder with our wildland fire service partners at the state and local levels to protect our fellow Californians in 2020 and beyond. We need all citizens and visitors of California to help prepare for and prevent wildfires, especially during this pandemic emergency to reduce impacts to communities and preserve firefighting resources throughout the state and country.”
The education-focused week occurs annually in May and highlights the benefits and techniques of home hardening, defensible space, and technologies that help homeowners and communities to be both proactive and prepared. Partnership and Preparedness are exponentially more important this year as we all adjust to a new normal.
Help Be A Preparedness Hero:
- Get your brush clearance and defensible space work done now and keep it maintained.
- Due to the unprecedented pandemic situation, we need you to do your part more than ever, in preventing human-caused fires. Fewer human-caused fires will not only help protect communities from wildfire but will also preserve firefighting resources.
- 95% of wildfires in California are human-caused, and 25% of those are form unattended campfires. Help us, by reducing so many of the wildfires that can be prevented. Abide by your local fire restrictions, don’t park in overgrown grass, if towing a trailer make sure the tow chains are not dragging on the ground, drown your campfire and BBQs and make sure they are dead out.
- We need you to be extra cautious this year with any kind of ignition source, whether using a welding torch, a lantern or smoking. One less spark could mean one less preventable wildfire.
“CalFire Quote.”
This is a week CAL FIRE, our partners and cooperators across the State have the opportunity to remind residents about the dangers posed by year-round wildfires, the simple steps that should be followed to prepare for them, and what the public can do to prevent them from starting in the first place.
The Forest Service manages 18 National Forests in the Pacific Southwest Region, which encompasses over 20 million acres across California, and assists State and Private forest landowners in California, Hawaii and the U.S. Affiliated Pacific Islands. National forests supply 50 percent of the water in California and form the watershed of most major aqueducts and more than 2,400 reservoirs throughout the state. For more information, visit www.fs.usda.gov/R5.
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Just another example of the government trying too scare you into doing what they think is best for you. Slowly giving up you’re rights with out even nowing it until there all gone. Zeig heil.
Just another example of a comment trying to to scare you into believing what is worst for you is best for you.
Slowly rotting your critical thinking skills until you don’t even know they’re gone. Hail Mary.
You probably haven’t been in a community that’s been devastasted by fire. They just want to be prepared what do you expect them to say please don’t worry about fires it will be fine?
Oh my god! They’re trying to SCARE ME INTO NOT CAUSING DESTRUCTIVE, DEADLY WILDFIRES?! What will they do next?! The wildfire is a LIBERAL HOAX! Wildfire is no worse than than the burner on your kitchen stove, and will go away when the weather gets warmer. Don’t let them control you! 5G CAUSES LIZARD PEOPLE!
??How is being prepared for a wildfire giving up your rights? Especially when alot are started by permitted bruns that get out of control. ☄??
It blows my mind that there are so many on this site who are only concerned about themselves.
You will be the death of us all.
furies, you are 100% correct my friend.
I suppose it might depend on whether you are more afraid of being prevented from taking care of yourself or being required to take care of yourself.
you come across as someone that would be dragging chains.
NO… Doubt!!!
Young forests are tinderboxes. Older forests use way less water and are less likely to burn hot enough to get out of control. If we keep creating young tinderbox forests by cutting the older healthy forests we will keep getting worse wildfires. The forests are being mismanaged, that is causing these out of control fires.
??Good point. ????????
Mixed aged forests with small openings are resilient, provide a variety of habitats and resources, weather environmental disturbances (such as fire, drought and disease) much better. The forest may be old but all of the trees need not be. Tended by humans with interest in all of the value of a place, the soil builds in quantity and vitality.
Industrial forests that feed industrial interests go through continuing cycles of boom and bust, ecologically and economically.
Except old forests can not support much human habitation. So it’s either subsistence constantly or burn occasionally.
I’m not against logging. There just needs to be a balance. Trees don’t even get productive as far as putting on substantial mass, until they are 50 years old. Logging every 20-30 years on the same area creates constant environmental issues. Sucking water, high ground temperatures and tinderbox conditions. It’s a management issue and the usfs isn’t doing a good job.
Something to think about.
??Agreed. ???
95% are caused by humans… Does that include PG&E?
An easier way to understand that is — all wildfires are human caused. The natural fires are food for the survivors.
I try to do a lot of fuel reduction, air quality can make it difficult.
make a large cinderblock fire pit where you can feed your brush with a pitchfork and call it a warming fire. and don’t burn on a red flag day.
It’s done when the grass is green, and on a larger scale when rain is coming. The smog nazi’s can be a problem when conditions are great for making progress. They have been ok this year for the larger part.
I find it crazy that the AQMD selects days that have morning inversions. I burn about 50 cubic yards of sticks a year in my fire pit. Its good exercise and fun. I hand saw everything into 6 foot lengths which is the exercise part.
The exercise part can be Running around with a drip torch as well.
that sounds more like the fun part.
Trashman, check into the Sonoma BioChar Institute’s “conservation burn” trainings. With approximately 1/3 of the air pollution and a pile of “biochar” that the animals will visit and distribute on the landscape (and black birdshit that looks awful on your white truck), these burns have been observed by the air quality folks and found to be acceptable and beneficial.
It takes slightly longer to build your pile and the start can sometimes be tricky and frustrating, but with the same amount of water you would have on hand for fire safety, you can put out the fire a little earlier and leave behind carbon (charcoal/biochar) to be incorporated back into the soil.
Most of the pollution savings comes from the top-down burning more completely burning the gasses. But putting out the fire early, while there’s still charcoal reduces the particulates.
Reducing fire danger is important. But often winds are so intense that there is no such thing as defensible space.
October 9, 2017, when I lost my Santa Rosa home in the Tubb’s Fire, the wind was so strong I stuggled to stand up while
loading my car to evacuate.
Flammable building materials used for housing is more problematic in my opinion.
One building material that IS fireproof is Hemp concrete. You know that picture of Wade Harris’s torch set up to cause a house fire? You CAN’T do that to Hempcrete.
Hemp construction rocks.
OT. Kym if you read this I want to recommend you try transdermal cannabis patches in addition to cannabis oil for your sciatica.
They have a quicker onset of action and can work up to 12 hours. A plus is that in the case of over medication you can simply remove the patch. I have sciatica and RSO and a patch offer reasonable relief.
Congrats on your grant.
??I’ll second that. ???????
You’re on the right track, NorCalNative, and condolences on your loss – For years I’ve been advising friends and clients that fire hardening the home is fully 50% of the equation for protection from wildfire. While roaming a devastated subdivision near Calistoga (in the Wine Country fires) in October 2017 looking for hazard trees to mitigate (my role in wildfire suppression since 1996 has been as a privately contracted tree faller), I realized that in a situation like that, that fire hardening the home is MORE than 50% because the fire was carried house to house and essentially skipped over the vegetation between. Houses spread out on 20-40 acre parcels were mostly gone but the foliage on the vegetation in between them was scorched from the heat of the house fires but not consumed. Pictures I’ve seen of the Camp fire look to be similar. As Stephen Pyne put it so well (https://www.wnycstudios.org/story/stories-fires-tell), essentially what began as a wildland fire transitioned into an urban fire. The best fire hardened home paper that I’m aware of is:
https://anrcatalog.ucanr.edu/pdf/8393.pdf
Unfortunately and frustratingly though, for some reason this outstandingly clear and comprehensive paper continues to wallow in relative obscurity.
The vast majority of homes burned in wildfires ignite from windblown embers landing in a “receptive fuelbed,” or vulnerable spot(s), not from a wall of flames. Proper defensible space (managing the vegetation and other fuels surrounding the structures) will preclude the likelihood of a wall of flame reaching the house which allows firefighters to EVEN CONSIDER defending the home. It will also allow them to stick with the defense longer if they feel threatened and consider evacuating themselves. Of the many publications about defensible space; this is my favorite: https://srcity.org/DocumentCenter/View/4776 Ironically, it was written for the Sonoma area that burned in 2017, and warned of what recently occurred.
Windblown embers can travel up to 2 miles in extreme conditions, so defensible space will not prevent them from landing on the house. That’s where fire hardening the home comes into play. I like to think of it as an analogy to Greek mythology. Imagine windblown embers as a hail of arrows. All it takes is one to find Achilles’ heel, and we’ve got a house ignited. Survey for Achilles’ heels, and mitigate them. To be sure, building codes have not proven sufficient to ensure a fire hardened home, although upgrades in 2008 have improved the situation for homes built after that. People often remark on the seeming randomness of homes burned vs not in wildfires. I and increasingly others, believe strongly that it’s much less random than suspected and more due to the level of fire hardening.
I firmly believe the most direct answer to this is meticulous application of fire hardening principles, and creation/maintenance of defensible space where appropriate. The two complement each other, and one without the other drastically reduces the likelihood of success. Consider the savings on all counts If buildings are disinclined to ignite in the first place. Indeed, improved forest management needs to occur as well, but without the measures suggested above, ANY wildfire in the wildland-urban interface (WUI) during dry and very windy conditions could result in similar disasters. In my experience, few folks (outside the fire service) truly understand defensible space but hardly anyone has even heard of hardened homes, much less actualized its principles. Part of what is so frustrating is that those principles are so simple — survey for Achilles’ heels and mitigate them to withstand the hail of arrows (ember wash). Adequate promotion and support for hardening buildings is most certainly the biggest “missing link” in wildfire resilience.
Here are success stories of homes surviving wildfires, such as the two from the Camp fire in Paradise detailed in this excellent article: https://www.sacbee.com/news/state/california/fires/article227665284.html and the data from the 2017 Thomas fire contained in this paper: https://gallery.mailchimp.com/934b7746792f1dee6f60ea043/files/2c95cdf4-d261-476f-84b1-bff446235875/fire_02_00009_v2.pdf
The information in this press release is accurate and relevant. My only issue is that the agencies sponsor “wildfire preparedness week” and tell us to clear brush at a time when burning brush to reduce fuels gets sketchy or dangerous due to warmer and drier weather. How about “wildfire preparedness winter?” There’s plenty of dry days all winter when you couldn’t let your burn pile get out of control if you tried.
Great info, thanks!