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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.

4. Support a communitywide wildfire strategy

Nick Ut/AP
Firefighting crews approach a fire in the Los Padres National Forest near Santa Barbara, Calif., on May 28, 2013.

  • By Jonathan Harsch Contributor

Homeowners are the first line of defense to protect their property and loved ones. But the Forest Service report also stresses that “reducing the loss of lives, property, infrastructure, and natural resources from wildfires depends on long-term community action.”

This action begins with efforts to become a “fire adapted” community. Such a community, the report advises, does the following. 

  • Accepts “fire as a part of the surrounding landscape.”
  • Reduces “the risk of brush, grass, and forest fires.”  
  • Agrees on “a community-wide pre-fire strategy as well as actions, to reduce risks and thus costs.”
  • Will “work together to remove fuels, reduce ignition sources, modify structures, prepare the larger landscape for fire, and build strong local response capability.”
  • Will “use codes and ordinances where possible, develop internal safety zones, build external fuel buffers, use preventive education, and form partnerships to address hurdles that can deter some people from participating in fire-risk reduction activities.”
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Mark Sappenfield
Editor

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