BAILEY HEALTHY FORESTS INITIATIVE
For a Fire Adapted Community
Changes in land use and well intended, but misguided, forest suppression policies drastically altered our forests. Understanding what forests looked like before these changes is important for making forest management decisions as we work to proactively restore forest health and reduce the risks of catastrophic fire.
Siding is the largest overall surface of your home, and can ignite when exposed to extremely high radiant heat from wildfires. Replacing your easily ignitable siding (such as wood) with ignition resistant siding helps protect your home and the homes of those around you. Ignition resistant siding options include stone/rock, stucco, and cement board. Get started today!
Landscape restoration benefits rural communities. This report by Headwaters Economics provides a way to calculate these economic impacts.
This is a great resource for making the case for restoration and understanding the impact of restoration beyond improved landscapes.
In a study by Headwaters Economics, it was found western communities are doing relatively little to meaningfully respond to wildfire risk. Understanding challenges in high-risk communities is critical for figuring out how policies and proactive measures can reduce risks.
Lessons highlighted include:
Very interesting finding from Headwaters Economics – the Firewise program is effective at what it was designed to do (increase safety), but is not associated with lower suppression costs. Read the full brief on the Headwaters Economics website.
The Firewise Communities/USA® Recognition Program often is mentioned as a potential remedy. However, Firewise focuses on increasing safety and was not designed to lower suppression costs.
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The costs of fighting wildfires has become a major policy issue in the United States, and there is general agreement that both the area burned by wildfires and the frequency of large fires, often termed “mega-fires,” will increase in coming decades.
As a result, policy makers, land owners, and wildfire managers are seeking viable solutions to reduce wildfire risks and costs. One often-talked about remedy is the voluntary Firewise Program. Such efforts—focusing largely on reducing fuels and making structures safer from fires—can provide a safer environment for firefighters and enable more structures to be saved.
The Firewise Program was not designed to lower suppression costs, and our research finds no evidence of a relationship between wildfire suppression costs and Firewise participation.
The lack of evidence that Firewise reduces suppression costs suggests that policy makers attempting to address increasing wildfire suppression costs are better served focusing on other solutions, such as shifting costs to the local jurisdictions and property owners incurring wildfire liabilities and limiting future development in fire-prone landscapes.
The challenges of wildfire suppression are two-fold and necessitate different approaches for addressing issues in built environments compared to where no development yet exists. In wildfire-prone areas with built homes, suppression resources and mitigation efforts, including the Firewise Program, are critical for protecting people and property.
However, because the vast majority of private land in the western WUI is not yet developed (84%), solutions are needed to address the potential for expanded development and associated wildfire risk. For now, it appears that the Firewise Program is not a solution for reining in suppression costs when wildfires threaten communities.
We must all work together to promote Fire Adapted Communities and return the forests to a natural cycle.
Cooper, Jonathan Bruno of the Coalition for The Upper South Platte and president and owner of Wildfire Planning International Molly Mowery each said Thursday that revamped codes and regulations need to go hand-in-hand with individual responsibility in order to achieve “Fire Adapted Communities.”
Bruno is a proponent of allowing the forest to mitigate itself through ground fires. Those easily manageable blazes were the norm before the late 19th Century when people became obsessed with putting out every fire as quickly as possible. Bruno said education and mitigation to restore forests to a pre-20th Century state is like a layer cake.
He said if federal, state, regional and local officials join with homeowners associations and individual residents, the result will be a sweet one.
“This isn’t going to stop,” Bruno said, referring to increased fire activity as a result of extreme climate conditions and more and more people moving into the WUI.
Bruno and CUSP volunteers have already been thinning forests around Teller County and Park County towns, attempting to create a barrier that will slow fire and keep it low as it approaches.
Mowery believes that turning WUI areas into Fire Adapted Communities is definitely possible.
Friday Firewise: Now that it’s feeling more like spring, are you thinking about what you’re going to plant in your garden? Landscaping can make a huge difference in protecting your home from wildfire, so consider how different plant species and spacing will affect your wildfire risk. Check out this great resource for more information about firewise landscaping:http://www.ext.colostate.edu/pubs/natres/06305.html
The Okmulgee Agency and Eastern Oklahoma Region, Bureau of Indian Affairs (BIA) produced this video highlighting traditional use of fire, ecology of fire adapted areas, fire adapted communities, and current BIA fuels mitigation practices. Learn more at fire adapted.org
There’s a tremendous amount of wildfire and flood mitigation work going on in the Pikes Peak Region, but much more is needed. It’s important for government agencies, nonprofits, businesses, communities, other organizations, and individuals to all work together to mitigate the impacts of the next wildfires and floods. When we all work together to tackle these issues on a large scale, the impact is much greater than the sum of the parts, and communities are much safer.
Friday Firewise: Start now. Create an emergency plan with your family and assemble an emergency kit you can easily grab in case of wildfire or another disaster. Include nonperishable food, plenty of water (1 gallon per person for 3 days), extra clothing, a first aid kit, a battery-powered radio (with extra batteries), hand-crank flashlights, prescription medications, and any other items you may need. Find more information at http://www.ready.gov/build-a-kit.