so basically you're creating fire breaks
and reducing fuel loads throughout the
fire prone sector while also harvesting
yields and creating healthy ecosystems
and that's the permaculture way
[Music]
so i live here on the west coast of the
united states and let me tell you the
fires have been feeling pretty
apocalyptic in recent years
the climate is changing and fire season
has expanded summers are longer hotter
and drier than they have been with
strong wind events that have added up to
explosive wildfire conditions
the smoke has gotten crazy and fire
disasters have become a new normal that
we're living with so whether you're in
australia southern europe siberia or
anywhere else that's been burning up we
need to understand and prepare to
survive this new normal and permaculture
design has a lot of helpful design
strategies to make us more resilient to
wildfire danger so there's two important
pieces to designing for wildfire defense
because before you can actually design
your defensive landscape you need to
understand the most likely direction
that wildfire will travel towards you
from
now under normal fire conditions there
are three main influences on the
direction and severity of a fire and
those are slope wind and fuel so this is
all pretty common sense heat rises so
fire will travel up slope and preheat
the air and vegetation ahead of it as it
burns and fire is carried and fanned by
the wind and the intensity of the fire
will be determined by the type and
amount of fuels present so if there's
dense and flammable vegetation then
there are also fire ladders where the
fire can easily jump from grasses to
shrubs to low tree limbs and up into the
tree canopies
then you've got a problem
because when slope wind and fuel are all
aligned then a fire has lots of energy
fast and fatal movement
in any landscape they'll be the typical
prevailing wind direction during the
fire season in most of the western
united states
south and west winds are common during
the summer and fall fire seasons
so these south and west facing slopes
will be more dehydrated and will be able
to carry fire earlier on in the season
than these wetter and cooler northeast
slopes
but just because the wind comes from the
southwest for example doesn't mean that
a fire can't burn up a north slope
a fire can burn up any one of these
slopes because under normal fire
conditions slope trump's wind meaning
that slope and fuel are actually the
dominant forces in determining wildfire
danger
so are you noticing something about this
house location here when you're on the
top of a hill or ridge then fire can
burn up to you from any direction
so in a fire prone landscape this is
just a bad place to put a house or
neighborhood under normal fire
conditions we talked about how slope
trumps win and fire burns upslope as a
rule but when we have extreme fire
conditions it means that we introduce
very strong winds into the equation
and when very strong sometimes hurricane
force winds are blowing then they can
actually push fires down slope with
catastrophic results let's look at where
i live in northwest oregon's willamette
valley for example here's my
interpretation of the willamette valley
see here we have the coastal mountains
right here
and then we have the willamette valley
in here
and then we have the cascade mountain
range right here
now mostly during summer we have
south and westerly winds
the coastal mountains facing the ocean
are very wet so not a lot of fires start
over here
now you can get strong winds from the
west and the south during fire season
with the cascade mountains sloping up in
the same direction as the prevailing
winds and so most of the likely
direction of fire is up these mountains
we have slope and wind direction aligned
all on heavily forested land here
but in the summer of 2020 during the
labor day fires the winds changed
direction at the wrong time and a very
severe hot dry wind came from the
continent's interior and blew with
hurricane force gusts
over the cascade mountains and acted
like a blow torch to funnel crazy strong
winds down all these canyons and valleys
so suddenly
wind took over as the dominant force and
the destruction was catastrophic
whole towns burned down an irreplaceable
natural areas were destroyed
even the wetter coastal mountain range
was not immune and a wildfire burned
down slope almost to the ocean
some say these winds were just a
historic anomaly and others say the jet
stream has been thrown out of whack by
the warming of the planet and we can
expect this kind of rare wind event more
regularly either way i'm playing it safe
and considering that this could happen
again in any year
it's the same situation in california
when hot and dry continental winds have
crested the sierra nevada mountains and
blown down electric power lines which
have sparked fires across the region
this is an all new level of destruction
than we've previously experienced added
to by the fact that houses and towns
have spread far up into forested and
highly flammable areas so really
before we even get into permaculture
design for wildfire defense you need to
ask yourself if your location is even
survivable in the event of a megafire
because the scale of what i'm showing
you here in many cases is beyond what
you can mitigate on a single property at
this point there are a lot of homes
developments and towns that are just
poorly placed within the macro landscape
and i'd encourage you to take a hard and
sober look at your location because
these mega fires are no joke so we've
talked about assessment
now let's talk about
design
[Music]
all right so we're going to talk about
design now
figuring out the likely direction and
intensity of a wildfire is the first
step now as we saw in the first part of
this presentation
sloped and forested areas are more at
risk for wildfire so let's start there
so
in the event that a fire is coming it's
more than likely that the power grid
will go down in your area and you won't
have the use of electricity unless
you're off the grid so it's really smart
to have a reservoir that's kept full of
water throughout the dry season now of
course a large water tank will do as
well if you want a whole bunch of
details about permaculture pond design
please see my previous video
permaculture ponds why where and how
linked above and also in the video
description
now this drawing is diagrammatic so
don't actually place the pond directly
above the house where if there was a
breech it would flood the building but
you want to place it elevationally above
the house and high enough above that you
can pressurize sprinklers on the roof
and around the home and also where you
can have a valve that you can open and
flood some sort of perimeter basin or
swale around the home so the most
important thing is that this is all
non-electric or using off-grid
electricity and set up in a way where
you can deliver a high volume of water
and wet the home area quickly so that's
why having the pond at some elevation
above the structure is so important now
how you fill that pond or tank and keep
it full is going to depend on your
particular site and you can watch some
of my other videos or take a
permaculture design course to get an
idea of that now directly around the
home you don't want any flammable
vegetation and you don't want to have
fire ladders where fire can travel up
from the ground level into the canopies
of trees so having more luscious big
leaf trees for shade and food production
are appropriate now around the house
itself in the direction that a likely
fire is going to come from you want
things that really will not burn like
patios vegetable gardens so you also
want to exclude things that will burn
from around your house like wood piles
wood fencing and fuel storage and then
you basically want to place
non-flammable design elements in the
direction of likely fire like irrigated
orchards
roads driveways and parking areas waste
water treatment areas so do you play
volleyball have a croquet lawn flower
garden seed drying or winnowing area
just place everything that could serve
as a fire break
between your structures and the likely
direction of a fire it's that simple and
from the permaculture perspective this
means positioning your zone one highly
managed elements within your fire sector
and then you've got to consider that in
a fire it's not just the flames itself
coming towards you but it could be
embers
whirling and blowing in the wind in a
kind of a storm so the design of the
house needs to consider surviving an
ember storm now there are a lot of
resources out there for the
architectural design of a house that's
resistant to wildfire so i'm not going
to cover that in this video just search
wildfire resistant homes and you'll be
all set you'll have to consider the
intense heat and blowing embers that
proceed a fire's arrival and make sure
that your house can withstand that
without igniting so out from the home
area we have a different set of
treatments in the wider landscape
so this is the same home
and this broader area that's in the
likely direction of a wildfire is where
we'll look at now let's look at ways
that we can break the movement of a fire
and reduce the fuel load in the wider
landscape
first off like we mentioned previously
thinning out vegetation and removing
fire ladders is one way to stop a fire
from going up into the canopies of trees
but what do you do with all those
prunings there are a few options
one is to build a hugelkultur mound
a huge culture is essentially just a
mound of wood buried by soil where the
wood is piled up along the contour and
soil excavated out to bury the wood and
create a big long mound
now because this mound has a core of
wood over time it will break down and
become a big sponge for water so there
should be conditions to grow more
luscious and less flammable plant
species placing it along the contour
means that it will serve as a water
slowing structure in the landscape and
soak up extra rain water when it rains
but it can also be grazed by goats or
sheep to keep down grasses during the
fire season in fact you can rotate
animals through all these areas as
another method of keeping the fuel load
down and breaking the fire ladders and
you can include fencing maybe you can
even fit another pond in between your
home and the likely direction of a fire
and if you have enough water to release
below for flooding other areas during a
fire then that's even more ideal another
method of fuel reduction is to do your
own burning during the cooler rainy
season when the forest or shrub land is
thinned
and then turn the prunings into biochar
using a special biochar kiln so biochar
is a kind of charcoal that is used as a
soil amendment so you're basically
taking your prunings and burning them in
a special kiln that excludes oxygen
during the burning process which turns
the wood into a soil amendment that can
then be deposited on the forest floor to
improve the soil's health
and water holding capacity spongy
healthy soil will also help to reduce
the risk of fire by holding more
moisture in the system for longer time
so basically you're creating fire breaks
and reducing fuel loads throughout the
fire prone sector while also harvesting
yields and creating healthy ecosystems
and that's the permaculture way but
there are a couple more important things
to mention especially if you live in a
more remote rural area the first is to
have an evacuation route planned into
your overall design site that's away
from the likely direction of fire
and the last resort is to have some sort
of bunker where you can go underground
and wait out the fire alright so let me
know in the comments if you have more
ideas because this fire situation is
with us now and we need to innovate more
than ever to respond to this new normal
good luck out there folks and stay safe
[Music]