Landscape Design Tips for Firescaping

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      Last weekend, I attended an excellent San Diego APLD workshop, which included a presentation on on “Creating Fire Resistant Properties and Communities” by Doug Kent, author of seven books including Firescaping.  This is a resource book I have had in my collection for many years.  As an unexpected bonus, I and a couple of my designer friends got to spend a couple hours afterward getting to know Doug as we toured the San Diego Botanic Garden. 
    His talk and accompanying slides graphically showed both the best and worst cases of fire preparedness and what can result.  As someone who not only works but also lives in the heart of fire country, and who has evacuated my home on two occasions, this topic is as much of interest personally as it is professionalyl.  I have witnessed the impact of the loss of hundreds of houses in my own area, and how it changes a community forever.  Without a doubt, making one’s home and landscape safe from wildfire should be a chief concern of anyone living in an neighborhood like mine.
     Here are a few of the highlights from Mr. Kent’s talk:

• California experiences about 6000 wildfires in an average year. Of those, 99.9 percent are extinguished quickly and cause little damage to structures or loss of life.  It is the half dozen fires that rage out of control, burning in abnormally severe weather conditions,  that create all the destruction.
• Most people die fleeing a fire, often in their cars, and not in their homes.
• Access to and from your home during a fire is key, both along the street and in your driveway.  Fire personnel are trained to not approach homes or individual houses if they cannot see a clear and rapid way of escaping . If the street is too narrow or the home lies hidden along a winding driveway, they will not defend structures. We can all agree that their lives are more important than homes.
• Mesh screens across all vents open to the outside of home are considered one of the most important improvement features to protecting a home from wildfire.  The screens prevent embers from entering the house and starting the blaze internally.
• A five-foot space around the perimeter of the home is an important fire prevention consideration.  Anything that can catch fire should be eliminated (he showed a photo of a residence with lumber stacked next to the garage) within five feet of the home..
• Proper maintenance of the home and importantly of the landscape is a no-brainer-- painting, replacing cracked roof tiles, trimming dead or diseased branches, cleaning up fallen debris, and eliminating dead weeds and grasses, should be on everyone’s regular to-do list.  Mr. Kent showed a photo of a eucalyptus grove that had survived a fire, simply because of periodic pruning and removal of debris on the ground.   
• No matter how fire safe you keep your home, if the structure lies too close to a neighbor’s home that does not practice fire safety rules, both homes are in danger.  The home that is not fire safe will catch fire and then the neighboring homes may explode in the intense heat.
• Embers can travel and ignite up to five miles from the wildfire’s edge, starting a new fire and trapping people trying to escape.

     It is amazing that the fire that affected my home -- the Cedar Fire -- considered the most destructive fire in California history when it burned through the San Diego backcountry in 2003, has now, less than 20 years later, ominously dropped to number 4 on that list. We are in a new era when fire safety is of paramount concern, both in and outside the home.  If you would like a consultation that includes suggestions for readying your property to prepare for fire, please see my contact information.

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