Uncontrolled extreme
wildfires are inevitable. These are the conditions
when wildland urban interface disasters occur. The hundreds to
thousands of houses destroyed during wildfire. Does that mean that the wildland
urban interface disasters are inevitable as well? No. We have great
opportunities as homeowners to prevent our houses from
igniting during wildfires. Most of our perceptions are
that these big wildfires are something we can't
do anything about. They're overwhelming. If huge organizations
can't control the wildfire, how is it that somehow I
can do something to my house to keep it from burning down? It's not a matter of
controlling the wildfire, it's a matter of changing
those conditions of the house and its immediate surroundings. There's a lot that we can
do to the little things, to our house and its
immediate surroundings in order to reduce the ignition
potential of that house. I'm going to do an assessment
on this house for its ignition vulnerabilities. The assessment is what all
of us homeowners can do. Currently, we're not in fire
season, but it's getting hot and it's getting dry, so
this is a perfect time before the smokes in the
air to do this assessment. The great opportunity
we have as homeowners is that we can do the little
things around our house to keep our home from igniting. We can actually
separate our house from the extreme wildfire. We don't have to rely on the
control of the extreme wildfire in order to keep our
house from burning down. Over the last 30 years,
my colleagues and I have done research involving
laboratory experiments, field experiments, and post
fire disaster assessments to quantify and qualify the
relationship between a wildfire and a destroyed home. What we found is that
the high intensity flames, more than 100
feet away from the house are largely incapable of
igniting the house directly. It's the little things that seem
to be destroying the houses. The burning embers, the
we call them firebrand's lofted out of the high
intensity wildfire to land in the community,
sometimes directly on houses as well as the surroundings. It's not 100 foot
flames, it's a pile of firebrand's that would
fit in the palm of our hand. So my colleagues and I designed
a firebrand and amber shower demonstration. We have a full size house. It's got bark mulch and pine
needles around the base. It's got pine needles
in the rain gutters. It's got pine
needles on the roof. We have an ember
generator that then cast a brand blizzard at this house. In order for those firebrands
to be effective in igniting the house, they either have
to ignite the house directly, or they have to ignite
something around the house that then can spread to the house. The main factors determining
this home's ignition potential are right here, the home's
characteristics related to its immediate surroundings. For our assessment,
our prospective changes to this house being one of fuel
for the potential ignition. Look around your house and see
where the litter, the leaves and the needles have
piled up, and visualize that that's going to
be where firebrands begin to pile up and collect. So here, we have
plenty to litter, right up next to the house. It's on the steps. It could ignite, and start
this wall and step on fire. It also can ignite on
this lathing, which is right up underneath
the wood shingle siding, and ignite that. This doesn't burn
with high intensities. It burns with low intensities,
but it's extremely important. In fact on this
house, it easily could be the critical factor that
leads to its total destruction. If this house had rain
gutters, this litter would be in the rain
gutters potentially igniting and putting flame
right up at the eveline, potentially igniting the roof
and going into the attic. On this side of the
house, our attention should be on is this gable vent. It's the most
exposed kind of vent. I notice that it's got fine mesh
screen, which certainly helps keep large firebrands
from going into the attic and potentially
igniting this house. One of the things
we looked at were vents during the brand blizzard. The brands are directly
impacting that vent opening. The burning brands can
blow right into the attic and potentially ignite the
material that's in the attic. The remedy is simple. All we have to do
is use finer mesh screen to cover the openings. One of the important
aspects that we demonstrated was that you don't have to
have a metal roof in order to keep the house from
igniting from firebrand. What we showed was that any roof
that doesn't ignite and spread fire can survive
the brand blizzard. So as we previously
demonstrated, competition shingled roofs
with pine needles on them don't represent a
significant ignition problem. But look here, we've got a
wood-sided wall coming down to the top of the roof where
this needle deposition-- when it ignites, it's going
to put flame contact right on the side of the wood wall. This results in flame
contact and high ignition potential resulting in the
destruction of this house. The house includes
more than just itself if there are
outbuildings that are close enough to ignite
and spread to the house. So maybe we have a shed or
we've got a chicken coop, which then can burn long enough
to ignite the shed that's next to that, which then ignite
and burn sufficiently in order to ignite the house. So we need to be as concerned
about the surroundings of our outbuildings and their
condition as we do our house. I looked into landscaping. I looked into fireproof
home building. I looked into fireproof
lawn furniture. I mean, I was going
for everything that I could for the safest
fire safety you could. And we had a checklist. No firewood stacked
next to the house. All of our lawn
furniture was fire rated. I wanted to feel like
if there was a fire, we had the absolute best
chance possible of us and our house surviving. So some of the
little things that begin to get a house
during an extreme wildfire from the firebrands
are for example-- something as simple as
a broom being left out, flammable deck furniture,
where we've got flammable cushions on the furniture, on
the deck, next to the house. The cushions ignite
from the firebrand. They ignite the
deck railing which is connected to the house. We put 3 foot of rock citing
all the way around up the house, as well as in our landscaping,
3 feet out of crushed rock. We talk to people. All it took was one
thing, a firewood stacked in the wrong place
or lawn furniture caught fire on their porch. One tiny little technique
that wasn't followed. Well, knowledge is key. The more you know, the more
you can increase your chances. And not always does
that have to cost money. It's just knowledge. It's still a shock
to go through a fire. But to come back
and see your home, that's such an such
a good feeling. Flame contact on the house
is a really bad idea. What we want to make
sure of is that we don't get flame contact on the house. We don't have a fire
burning across pine needle litter for example, and making
direct contact with the house. But that only takes 5
feet around the house in order to keep
the flames away. Let's take a look at the
surrounding area of the house. Adjacent to this wood wall,
we've got these green shrubs. So the question is, are these
green shrubs a big problem? And do they have to be removed? Well, as long as we've got green
foliage without dead material, we're pretty good. But if we take a look, we've
got dead material in the canopy, and we've got dead material
deposited under the wood wall. What we want to do
to keep the shrubs is to prune out all the dead
material within the canopy as well as underneath in order
to keep the wall and the shrubs from igniting. So we don't need to
put out all the fires. We don't need to make
sure that no fire occurs within the neighborhood. We do need to make sure that
there isn't a high intensity fire within 100 feet. And we want to make sure
that surface fire doesn't come directly to the
house and ignite it. We definitely can't
have a flammable wood roof on our house. It's the most susceptible
to fire brand ignitions. But there are many things that
occur on a seasonal basis, cleaning up the litter around
the base of the house out of the rain gutters,
making sure that we've swept the deck of pine
needle litter and leaves. And making sure that our
firewood piles aren't on the deck, and making sure
that we've cut the grass, and not having things
right up next to the house that can burn. We've just taken a
look at this home. But it's obvious that every
home and every property are going to be different. That's why it's very important
for us to seek information, so that we can find the
vulnerabilities to ignition of our own homes. Remember, if your home doesn't
ignite, it doesn't burn. You've got to act now to
address these little things long before the fire ever starts.
