Prepare for wildfire season

Prepare Your Home for Wildfire Season
Prepare Your Home for Wildfire Season (click to enlarge)

In two Twitter messages published on Wednesday and Thursday, the U.S. Forest Service asked the public to prepare for the wildfire season.

Home wildfire preparedness on a budget

Five homeowner tipsThe Insurance Institute for Business and Home Safety built a huge wind tunnel large enough to test how well houses stand up to very strong winds. Now they have put together a few tips for the homeowner who wants to reduce the chances of their home being destroyed during a wildfire without spending a lot of money:

FIVE WAYS TO REDUCE YOUR WILDFIRE RISKS

Clean Roof
Not only does a clean roof look nice, but it can also reduce your wildfire risks. Embers can travel more than a mile from an actual fire, which can ignite combustible debris on your roof. Be sure to pay attention to areas where the roof meets a vertical surface, such as at a dormer. Also, be safe and never work on your roof if you are uncomfortable.

Clean Gutters
Have you cleaned your gutters lately? If not, they could be increasing your risk of wildfire damage. Gutters with combustible debris can be easily ignited by wildfire embers.

Clean Deck
Much like the roof and gutters, a deck full of combustible materials increases your risk of wildfire damage. Remember that patio furniture and lawn ornaments can also be combustible, so store them inside when you are not using the deck. In addition, removing combustible materials from under your deck is critical. If you do store combustible materials under your deck, enclosing the underside of the deck can be an option.

Carefully Position Yard Structures
Not only should combustible yard structures be placed away from your home, the area around them should also be maintained using noncombustible materials.

Relocate Propane and LP Tanks
Relocate your propane tanks at least 30 feet from your home. If this is not possible, create a 10-foot noncombustible zone around the tank.

CalFire bills for fire prevention

California homeowners will soon receive bills in the mail for fire protection. Beginning next week, bills for as much as $150 will be sent; most homeowners’ bills will run $115, with a $35 discount for people who live in fire protection districts and already pay for fire services.

The annual fee is controversial; it was signed into law last year to provide funding for CalFire and has been heavily criticized by rural residents who view it as “double taxation.” Taxpayer advocate groups, according to the Union Democrat, argue that the fee is a tax and should have required a two-thirds vote by the Legislature instead of just a simple majority vote.

Houses and other structures in the 31-million-acre State Responsibility Area (SRA) will be billed at the $150 rate. Daniel Berlant with CalFire told KPBS news that the number of structures in the SRA has grown by about 16 percent in the last decade. “That’s where the residential area starts meeting up into the forest,” said Berlant. “It’s that middle section that we call the wildland-urban interface where we see the most fires that cause impact and damage throughout California,so the rural residents that the state is responsible for protecting are the ones that will be assessed the fee.”

CalFire home safety site

The annual fee is $150 for the first structure and $25 for each additional structure on the property. The Rancho Santa Fe Review reported that the funds pay for prevention activities on SRA lands.

CalFire has a parcel viewer online to view mapped SRA lands.

Property owners who disagree with the fire fee assessed on their properties can petition for a redetermination of the fee calculation. The petition must be based on whether the fee applies to the property for which the petition is filed, and must detail the grounds for redetermination of the fee. Grounds could include proof of whether the structure is actually located in the SRA or the number of habitable structures or pre-existing local fire protection services. The firepreventionfee.org website has more details.

“Fear the ember”

Demonstration of burning embers on structure
Screen capture from video. Credit: WSPA

The wind-blown burning ember test on an actual structure that Wildfire Today told you about on March 17 actually happened on Thursday. Setting a structure on fire is one thing, but doing it inside another structure is rather unusual, to say the least. Yesterday the Insurance Institute for Business & Home Safety (IBHS) Research Center in South Carolina, using 105 huge fans and spark-generators, launched embers at a structure to demonstrate what can happen when a wind-driven fire approaches a poorly prepared structure. The result is predictable, as you can see in this video from a local station, WSPA.

Below is another video, this time from NBC:

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Here is an excerpt from News Channel 7, WSPA, which includes  a few words from Jack Cohen of the U. S. Forest Service’s Rocky Mountain Research Station, who has conducted a great deal of research on the ignitability of structures.

A 1200-square-foot test home was on the turntable for the wildfire demonstration. Part of it had vinyl siding, part of it cement-fiber siding and part had wood-fiber siding. Part of the roof was wood shakes, while the rest was asphalt shingles. There were also two kinds of rain gutters on the house: vinyl and aluminum.

The house had pine straw on the roof, in the gutters and surrounding the base of the home, as many homes have for landscaping.

For the simulation, metal tubes that look like tractor-trailer smoke stacks belched sparks as the fans blew the embers onto the house. Almost immediately, the pine straw around the house burst into flames.

The vinyl siding started to melt away from the house. The pine straw in the gutters was also on fire. The vinyl gutters also melted and fell, causing the ground beneath to burn even hotter. The aluminum gutters stayed in place, but that only kept the burning pine straw next to the wooden fascia boards of the house.

The wood shakes eventually caught on fire as the embers burned holes into them. The asphalt shingles were charred by the embers and burning pine straw, but they didn’t allow the fire to burn through to the wood beneath.

After the fires were doused, Julie Rochman, president and CEO of IBHS, said her main message for homeowners was to notice what happened. “That fire, which starts from sparks, from embers, burns very quickly, which is why my theme for today is, fear the ember.”

U.S. Forest Service official Jack Cohen said it’s important for homeowners to realize that it’s not always a wall of fire that destroys homes during a wildfire. All it takes is the embers. He suggested that homeowners near wooded areas remove any combustible materials from around their homes.

He also said they need to look at the building materials used on their homes and, if possible, replace wood shake roofs and wood or vinyl siding.

“The things that ignited on this structure are easily changed, but the only person that has authority, the only people that have authority to make that change are the homeowners. It’s private property,” he says.

Radiant heat, embers, and the ignitability of structures

Here are a couple of interesting videos featuring Jack Cohen, a researcher at the Missoula Fire Science Lab. The videos explain radiant heat and how difficult it is for fine fuels and structures to ignite from that alone, and the role of embers in spreading fire and burning structures.