Community Risk Reduction Specialist Colleen Potton has a wealth of knowledge on how to easily and inexpensively reduce the risk of fire around our homes and on our properties.
The most important things to know:
1. Fire can be caused by a number of things like lightning, cigarettes being thrown out a car window, or carelessness with outdoor fires. However, a fire grows and spreads quickly due to embers - those little flying hot things that are easily carried by wind and eventually land somewhere. If that somewhere is in the dry brush underneath your deck or in the bark mulch up against the foundation of your home, it could spell disaster.
2. When something like a shrub or wood pile or porch chair catches fire, the flames typically leap two times as high as the object itself. Whatever is above the object can catch fire because the flames might be able to reach it.
One of our Garden Club members recently asked Colleen come to their house (she visits for free) to provide a risk assessment and learned their property isn't wildfire ready. The siding on the garage side of the home, for example, doesn't come all the way down to the ground on the outside of the structure. This has left a small area between siding and ground that an ember could fly in to and catch the particle board behind the siding on fire. Solution: add metal flashing in that area.
A large Ponderosa pine is too close to the composite deck (composite is better than wood for decking). Solution: cut the tree back and keep all pine needles out of the roof gutters nearby. Also, remove the shrub that is growing directly under the tree.
Homeowner uses rock mulch for everything in the landscape except two small beds that have bark mulch and come right up to the foundation of the house. Colleen advised changing the bark mulch over to rock because of how close it is to the home and also because bark mulch can easily trap embers that can turn into fire, whereas rock mulch helps prevent embers from turning into something bigger.
Colleen's Helpful Resources
Wildfire Resistant Landscaping with drawings
FireWise Groundcover List
Wildfire Resistant Plants
The most important things to know:
1. Fire can be caused by a number of things like lightning, cigarettes being thrown out a car window, or carelessness with outdoor fires. However, a fire grows and spreads quickly due to embers - those little flying hot things that are easily carried by wind and eventually land somewhere. If that somewhere is in the dry brush underneath your deck or in the bark mulch up against the foundation of your home, it could spell disaster.
2. When something like a shrub or wood pile or porch chair catches fire, the flames typically leap two times as high as the object itself. Whatever is above the object can catch fire because the flames might be able to reach it.
One of our Garden Club members recently asked Colleen come to their house (she visits for free) to provide a risk assessment and learned their property isn't wildfire ready. The siding on the garage side of the home, for example, doesn't come all the way down to the ground on the outside of the structure. This has left a small area between siding and ground that an ember could fly in to and catch the particle board behind the siding on fire. Solution: add metal flashing in that area.
A large Ponderosa pine is too close to the composite deck (composite is better than wood for decking). Solution: cut the tree back and keep all pine needles out of the roof gutters nearby. Also, remove the shrub that is growing directly under the tree.
Homeowner uses rock mulch for everything in the landscape except two small beds that have bark mulch and come right up to the foundation of the house. Colleen advised changing the bark mulch over to rock because of how close it is to the home and also because bark mulch can easily trap embers that can turn into fire, whereas rock mulch helps prevent embers from turning into something bigger.
Colleen's Helpful Resources
Wildfire Resistant Landscaping with drawings
FireWise Groundcover List
Wildfire Resistant Plants
Interested in your own free fire mitigation assessment?
Colleen Potton
Community Risk Reduction Specialist
[email protected]
303-419-8807
The assessment takes about an hour.