Personal Wildfire Mitigation

Reader Contribution by Bruce Mcelmurray
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As I sit here and write this we have a wildfire burning a few miles away to our east and more wildfires to the west and south of us. There are wildfires breaking out across our state along with several other western states. At last count I counted 15 wildfires in our state alone. We have personally performed all the wildfire preparation possible and consider ourselves in a much better position than those who have not done any work or are waiting until the last minute. Waiting until the last minute to do wildfire mitigation may just be too late. We have been working at it for years and to do it properly requires advance planning and preparation. When we had our wildfire audit the wildfire expert who did it is the very same person who is the wildfire behavior specialist that we saw on television explaining why the worst wildfire in state history continues to burn out of control and can’t be contained. He rated our homestead 10 points below excellent with the lower the score being better. Being a wildfire trainer for the U.S. Forest Service and crew leader as well as a wildfire behaviorist certainly makes us comfortable with his ‘exceeds excellent’ rating of our home and property. He made certain recommendations which we have since followed that further lower our score even more and increase the chance our home will survive and us too if we can‘t evacuate.

As we look around our area we see many homes that have only done superficial wildfire mitigation work or none at all. When you choose to reside in a semi arid state and your biggest hazard is wildfire it seems to me that individually you need to do all you can to mitigate the hazard on your property for your own protection and for the safety of any firefighter that may have to defend your home against wildfire. Evacuation is clearly the first option but having a safe haven in case we are unable to evacuate is a solid back up plan. Having an expert tell us that our property rates better than excellent and that our emergency plan is top notch is reassuring. It is not all that complicated and there is an abundance of material available to guide the homesteader in doing it correctly.

What is causing erratic weather patterns and the flooding in some areas, tornados in others and wildfires in our area? I’m not an expert or even remotely knowledgeable on weather patterns but I strongly suspect there is more to climate change than many would admit. Those who do agree on climate change state that historic records reveal that there has been a slow warming trend over the past several years and that CO2 emissions have increased dramatically, exacerbating or accelerating this warming trend. Then

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