HELP YOUR HOME TO SURVIVE A WILDFIRE
Start creating defensible space by imagining flames surrounding your home
When preparing your home for a wildfire, it helps to imagine that flames are already surrounding it.
“If that bush were on fire, would your house catch fire?” said Mendocino Unit Cal Fire Capt. Anthony Massucco, advising that you should expect flames to extend at least three feet beyond the vegetation they are burning. “Your yard should look like a campsite. Picture the cleared area around a park fire pit” to help visualize the best fire-safe landscaping.
“Just because something is green, that doesn’t mean it won’t burn,” he said, explaining that not only could healthy plants still catch fire, anything
that is “lush and green” now can quickly turn dry and brown if you’re not there to water it for a few days.
And just how easy is it for an ember to land in a planter? To illustrate, Massucco described a “huge, empty” parking lot in Santa Rosa during the 2017 Tubbs Fire where “every single one of the flower beds with a receptive fuel bed was on fire — in the middle of a ginormous, asphalt parking lot. So if those can catch on fire, the ground fuels around your structure are also going to catch on fire.”
Flames, embers and radiant heat
Massucco was describing how to create defensible space
around your home with other experts Wednesday as part of a demonstration hosted by the Mendocino County Fire Safe Council at a property overlooking Lake Mendocino and surrounded by oak woodlands.
Yana Valachovic, a forest adviser and head of the University of California Cooperative Extension for Humboldt and Del Norte counties, began the presentation Aug. 18 by explaining the three ways fires can damage homes: “with flames, embers and radiant heat.”
While active flames are the most obvious and destructive force, Valachovic said embers, “which is the movement in the wind column of burning bits of vegetation or other particles,” pose a silent and nearly invisible risk that can be just as dangerous.
“Embers fly through the air and sort of bombard buildings, finding little nooks and crannies to penetrate, or they create little spot fires adjacent to the house,” she said. “So we have to think about how to protect ourselves from this thing that
moves in the air, sometimes with some force.”
To predict where those embers might land, Valachovic suggested looking at the leaves outside your home on a breezy day to see how and where they move “in the air column, because the embers are going to follow those same currents. So if you see leaves accumulated, look at what’s around them and how vulnerable it is.”
Another way to judge how safe the outside of your home is from embers? “Imagine striking a match and dropping it on the ground right outside your front door,” she said. “Would you feel safe?”
Norm Brown, who retired from Cal Fire and is now a project manager with the Mendocino County Fire Safe Council, added that one measurement analysts use to evaluate fire conditions is called the Probability of Ignition (PI) of embers, meaning if you light 100 matches, how many of them would start a fire? And earlier this week near the huge and still growing Dixie Fire, Brown said that probability was “99 percent, as in 99 out of 100 matches you drop would start their own fire.”
Roofs, vents and defensible space
Along with the three dangers, there are three main approaches to protecting your home from fire, Valachovic said: “Roof, vents and defensible space, especially those first five feet adjacent to the building, and then the six inches of attachment point from the siding to the ground.
“The roof needs to be in good shape, because the roof is the largest horizontal structure that collects material and really has to resist the exposure of embers,” she said. “So if the roof is not in good shape, it’s a fundamental challenge.”
“The second piece are the vents,” she continued. “We need vents, because the building needs to have circulation to be able to move cool air in and hot air out, and let the moisture that collects in the building escape. But the problem is also that vents can be penetrated by embers, or even by flames.”
The third piece is creating defensible space, and for those unable to adequately prepare their property, the local Fire Safe Council had some good news Wednesday.
Defensible Space Assistance Program
For those who can’t physically do the work themselves and are financially unable to pay someone else to do it, Scott Cratty, executive director of the Mendocino Fire Safe Council, said his organization has a team who can assess your home, then complete the recommended clearing for you.
“Our go-to crew for defensible space projects has been members of the Hopland Band of Pomos,” said Cratty before the home assessment demonstration Wednesday, describing the crew as also “doing roadside clearing for us. Next week they will be doing roadside clearing up in Brooktrails, and hopefully we’ll just keep broadening their duties.”
Cratty said members of the crew were on-hand Wednesday to learn from the fire experts as they prepare for many more projects to come, given that the Fire Safe Council was just awarded $650,000 from the Mendocino County Board of Supervisors Tuesday.
“We did only have a few spots open, but thanks to this large grant, we have many more available,” Cratty said. “So we want to get the word out that we have a lot more capacity in this program now.”
Cratty said the program is meant to help people who are elderly, or otherwise disabled, and living on a fixed-income to prepare their homes for wildfire. To apply, Cratty said you can call the Council at 707-462-3662, or visit its website to fill out an application.
“We did only have a few spots open, but thanks to this large grant, we have many more available.” — Scott Cratty, executive director of the Mendocino Fire Safe Council