Our Fire Prevention Work

Notice that in the before picture, the annual grass grew right up and into the lower branches of the highly combustible Douglas Fir trees. In the after picture, you can see that we have cut the grass down to less than 3 inches in height and have limbed up not only the lower branches of the Douglas Fir tree but of all the trees remaining on site. You can also see that we selectively removed some trees from the site in order to decrease the canopy enclosure which allows more light to hit the forest floor. This opening up of the canopy aids in reducing the ability of a fire to travel through the canopy of the forest.

Critical defensible space tip: Once the flame lengths of a wildfire get taller than an adult person or about 6 feet tall, direct firefighting efforts can be seriously impeded by heat and direct flames. (Extrapolated from the nwcg fireline handbook).

Solution: Remove the ladder fuels by limbing up the trees in your defensible space area and by reducing the total volume of brush and fuels on the ground in your defensible space area.

In these photos, notice in the before picture the entangled mess of overcrowded Douglas Fir trees. This overcrowded is common place in our forests these days. It is also referred to as a “dog hair thicket”. It presents some major problems as you can see in the before picture. First, it has plenty of standing dead trees for a fire to consume. Second, all of the remaining live trees have lower branches that are all dead from over shading. Third, the native Oak species are being choked off by the taller Douglas Fir trees whose canopies are shading the tops of the Oaks. This will eventually cause the Oaks to die and it will also cause the Oak to be weakened and thus more susceptible to Sudden Oak Death Syndrome.

In the after photo, you can see through the forest and you can see each tree that makes up the forest. All dead trees and branches have been removed and chipped up. All trees remaining in the project site have been limbed up to 8 feet.

Critical defensible space tip: Eight (8) to eleven (11) foot flame lengths will generate 500-1000+ (BTUs/ ft./ second). This leads to torching of individual trees, crowning and spot fires. This in turn makes direct flame attack by ground firefighters and bull dozers ineffective.

Solution: Limb up trees in your defensible space area to about 6-10 feet in height depending on the slope of your defensible space area. Also, remove all brush piles, dead limbs and branches from your defensible space area so that the flame lengths stay small enough for ground firefighters to manage.

The purpose of this project was to increase the roadway access and to thin out the overgrown forest by 30 feet on both sides of the roadway. By doing so it accomplishes three safety goals. First, to allow residents to evacuate quickly by establishing a buffer zone between the roadway and the wildfire. Second, to allow firefighting equipment to easily respond into the area while residents simultaneously evacuate. Third, to effectively widen an existing fire break (the roadway) by 60 feet.

Notice that in the before picture, the brush and trees have grown into the roadway effectively choking off the resident’s evacuation route. In the before picture, you can barely see the bend in the road at the center of the picture. In the after picture you are looking from that bend in the road all the way back to the beginning. Notice that the indigenous trees are still in place but appear much better. Those trees were limbed up to between 6 and 15 feet in height. The height of our limbing process is dependent upon the overall height of the tree and the expected flame lengths projected if a fire were to pass under them. In this instance, Firescape has increased the usable roadway width to approximately 16 feet whereas before it was realistically 8-10 feet wide. Also notice that Firescape has returned the landscape to its natural park-like appearance. It is natural for forests to become very dense and overcrowded as shown in the before picture but it is equally natural, without human stewardship, to be completely destroyed by wildfire.

Critical defensible space tip: Wildfires sometimes move faster than you can drive a car. They will also generally burn up all usable fuel outside the home faster than the home will ignite and then burn down.

Solution: Establish a defensible space area around your home, remodel your home to include fire resistive features, have a wildfire evacuation plan for your family with a trigger point for when you should evacuate and also a trigger point for when it is too late to evacuate. If you have done your defensible space work, you will be safer sheltering in place rather than trying to evacuate when a wildfire is already upon you! Fact: 13 of 17 fatalities in the 2003 cedar fire were killed while trying to evacuate. (wikipedia).

The following individuals lost their lives in the Cedar Fire:

This Firescape hand-constructed fireline project was done for the Rincon Valley Fire District on a vegetation mitigation parcel lien. What does that mean? It means that the Rincon Valley Fire District saw a very large potential threat to a specific area of their community and followed through with mitigating the problem. Firescape was contacted toward the end of their fruitless efforts to have the parcel owner comply with grass mowing.

Due to the steepness and rockiness of the terrain, Firescape recommended a more permanent solution to this annual problem. The final plan was to build an 1800 foot fireline by hand that would serve to protect the homes seen on the right of the picture from fire coming down the hill toward them. This fireline would also protect the homes, not seen in these pictures, up on the hill to the left.

The fireline protects the homes at the bottom of the slope by creating a break for firefighters to work from and it also provides a chance for the fire to stop naturally as it backs down from up above. The homes on the bottom would be most threatened from a wildfire occurring during a North Wind event as they face directly to the North.

The most important feature of this fireline project is that we strategically placed the line about twenty feet from the back fences of the homes that you see. This allows for the fireline to protect against any accidental fires that children may cause in the homeowners back yards. Remember in the pictures, there are other homes just up slope and to the left. Sometimes we need to not only protect ourselves from fires we did not cause but we must also protect our neighbors from fires that we may have caused.

Get Certified!
Find out about our Defensible Space Placarding Program.

State of California Wildfire News, Regulations and Defensible Space Information:

Please click on the CAL FIRE logo above.

Fire safety tips that could save your home