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Wildfire season: 7 ways you can help save lives and property

Homeowners living within a mile of forests or any fire-prone landscape – public or private, rural or urban – can take simple preventive steps to limit damage from wildfires. Here are seven ways to help your community become "fire adapted" and contain rising fire-control costs.

3. Have a written evacuation plan

Daniel Dreifuss/AP/The Santa Maria Times
Members of a fire crew hike up a hill to check for hot spots as they try to contain a wildfire near Paradise Road in the Santa Ynez Mountains in California on May 28, 2013.

  • By Jonathan Harsch Contributor

The Forest Service and other organizations urge residents to have a formal evacuation plan. Notes the Forest Service: “Such proactive action on the part of homeowners is critical because when a wildfire occurs, it might be impossible for firefighters to reach and protect all individual properties, depending on the fire’s size and intensity and the availability of firefighting resources.” This warning means that homeowners could be left to face a wildfire on their own – and could be forced to evacuate.

Because evacuation remains a possibility for any home in a fire-risk area, prepare for it.

  • Write an evacuation plan shared with all family members and preferably with neighbors, too.
  • Decide on family gathering points and alternative evacuation routes that may be decided by wind and fire directions.
  • Keep a list of important papers, purses and wallets, cellphones, laptops, personal belongings, animals, food, water, blankets, and other items you would want to take with you.
  • Ensure that at least one dependable vehicle is always gassed up and ready to roll.
  • List phone numbers including emergency services to inform people when you evacuate and where you’re headed.
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Mark Sappenfield
Editor

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