Dear Editor,

I’ve been talking to (or forcing my opinion on) a few people recently and decided to seek a wider audience who want to do what they can to protect their property against a wildfire.

My issue is the popular misconception that the way to mitigate against wildfire is to cut down trees. The US Forest Service manages much of our forest and large-scale projects are typically done under USFS contracts. So when our community develops its Wildfire Protection Plan (CWPP) a central component of it will be to identify forested areas that need treatment by the USFS. Every CWPP is required to identify areas for treatment.

But the USFS only has a couple treatment methods in its tool-bag: removing trees and controlled/ prescribed burns. The research consensus is that prescribed fires are more effective against future wildfires and better for the ecology. But they’re complicated to conduct in the WUI and landscape-scale efforts can be slow, so tree-removal is often the prevailing treatment.

There is a place for thinning but large clear and patch-cuts of forest, in the name of fuels reduction and fire breaks, are ineffective in the face of wildfires burning under the extreme weather conditions that are becoming more likely with climate change.

Wildfires may not be disastrous if lives and property aren’t lost, so our efforts as a community and as homeowners should be to protect those two things. While our CWPP should identify treatment areas to be thinned and burned: egress, evacuation and preparedness should be our top community priorities, and home hardening and defense our priorities as homeowners.

Look at the pictures from Paradise, California, and Marshall, Colorado; read the reports. The unburned trees in the photos suggest that the initial means of ignition in these disasters was not from trees near homes catching fire and causing direct flame impingement or radiant heat, rather it’s from ember storms (that may be coming from near or far) and creeping fires that move through slow-burning fuel.

You can protect your home against these threats by creating and maintaining Home Ignition Zones (and it’s not all about removing trees). For example, the 5’ zone right next to (and attached to) the house should be combustible-free (just soil) which will stop a creeping fire. Other steps also help against flying embers, creeping fires and radiant heat. We used to think that these steps and measures were only critical for homes in the Wildland-Urban Interface, but urban residents like those in Marshall, Paradise, Lahaina, Yellowknife, etc. know differently.

There are a lot of sources for excellent information about Home Defense and how to create effective Home Ignition Zones. I’m partial to Colorado State Forest Service material but Canada is publishing a lot of good information too.

Thanks for listening. Please create and manage your HIZs, support prescribed fires and understand that removing trees and forest beyond 30-100 feet from homes and buildings will have diminishing benefits.

Mark Foreman, Ph.D.

Nederland

Volunteer firefighter with TFPD