New book offers important ways to firescape your house
Before the devastating 2018 Camp Fire hit their Sierra Nevada foothills home, Rachel Schleiger and her family thought they were prepared for a wildfire.
They had created defensive space and hardened their home as much as possible and, although their house survived, their property burned.
In the aftermath, Schleiger realized that the standard recommendations are not “cut-and-paste,” she says, and instead should be tailored to each family, property and community.
This prompted Schleiger and co-author Adrienne Edwards to write, “Firescaping Your Home: A Manual for Readiness in Wildfire Country” (Timber Press, $29.99).
In it, the ecologists and faculty lecturers at California State University, Chico, give strategies for hardening homes, tips on creating attractive defensible space that is supportive of wildland habitat, and includes a catalog of 640 fire-safe plants and resources directories.
“After the Camp Fire, we were struck by conflicting recommendations about defensible space around homes in the wildland-urban interface. The WUI is where most structures are destroyed during wildfires, where buildings are adjacent to, or intermixed with, wildland habitats, whether grassland, shrubland or forest,” she says.
“As ecologists, we were concerned that some recommendations would go beyond what might reasonably protect our homes, with too much emphasis on clearing all vegetation, effectively destroying the wild habitats we want to live near, and in many cases, making our homes more vulnerable to ember ignition.”
In “Firescaping Your Home,” Schleiger says that she and Edwards hope “to empower homeowners to firescape with wildlife in mind and to not only be prepared as an individual, but as a community.
“Overall, our goals for readers are to get to know where they live and to know their community,” she says. “In an emergency, you need to work together to get to safety. And to make changes that support wildlife. It is imperative to conserve and support the habitats that drew us to live in these beautiful fire-prone communities.
According to Schleiger, “over the last decade, the number, size, and intensity of wildland fires has increased, causing more structure losses and fatalities.”
Preparing for them can be overwhelming.
“There are lots of suggestions in the ‘get a second mortgage to pay to re-do your entire house route,'” she says. “It’s frustrating to see so many suggestions that are not in most family’s budgets. Our book provides insight for all budgets.”
Schleiger offers some good tips:
• “Each season of the year you can be doing something in your yard to be ready for fire season. Spreading your efforts across the whole year makes the process much less stressful headed into fire season.”
• Family first. “Beyond our book topics, know that being prepared to evacuate saves your family and that is more important than your home and landscape. Have a ‘Go Bag’ that includes your wildland fire action plan with house preparation, packing lists, evacuation plans and contact numbers, so when an emergency arises, you and your family are ready to go.”
• Structures second. “Assess your house and any other structures where you live for fire vulnerability. Then prioritize fireproofing on those structures with respect to degree of hazard, and costs for upgrades. We provide lots of tips in our book, but you can also consult with a fire professional or contractor with experience in how to make homes more fire resistant.”
• Landscapes third. Nothing combustible such as foundation plantings or wood fencing should be within the “noncombustible zone” located within 5 feet of structures.
The “lean, clean, and green zone” covers the area from 5 to 30 feet (or more depending on slope) of structures.
“Research indicates that thinning fuels within 30 feet of structures, and maintaining a noncombustible zone next to structures, are far more important than anything you might do beyond the lean, clean and green zone.”
• Habitat support. “Think about your neighbors; that is, your plant neighbors, your wildlife neighbors and your human neighbors. The more land we develop, the more we need to provide oases for native plants. Pollinators and other wildlife need food, water and shelter.”
• Time vegetation clearing to protect wildlife. “In a cooler, wetter year, you should leave flowers, seeds, branches and other habitat in place longer prior to fire season to allow organisms to reproduce. In a hotter, drier year you might have to clear vegetation sooner, but many of your wildlife neighbors would clear out sooner as well.”
• “Neighbors can be a weak link in the firescaping chain. For example, fences may make good neighbors, but wood fences shed embers like crazy. When attached to houses, fires can burn house-to-house following fence lines, toppling like dominoes.”
• Plan ahead. “Physically preparing is one thing, but mentally preparing is another. Cell towers went down, so we couldn’t access information (about the fire’s direction or safe exit routes) or contact anyone who might know the answers.”
With people in flight or fight mode, not everyone was making good decisions, she says. “It was chaos. Practice what you would do in an evacuation, and learn some calming techniques.”
Show off
Since so many of the popular home tours are off the calendar this year, please consider this your invitation to share with fellow readers the images and description of your garden or newly designed or remodeled Marin home.
Please send an email describing either one, what you love most about it, and a photograph or two. I will post the best ones in upcoming columns. Your name will be published and you must be over 18 years old and a Marin resident.
PJ Bremier writes on home, garden, design and entertaining topics every Saturday. She may be contacted at P.O. Box 412, Kentfield 94914, or at pj@pjbremier.com.