Hi, I'm Cody Zesiger with Utah State University Extension.
We're up on the south side of Bear Lake and we're talking about how you can harden
your home and protect it from risk to wildfire.
When defending the home one needs to understand what the home ignition zone is.
Most homes are lost to small fires started by embers or small pieces of debris
catching fire near the home.
The home ignition zone is split into three sections.
The first right here where this fence line is, is about 5 feet out from the house.
So 0-5 feet.
Then we move out 30 feet from the home,
and after we move from 30 feet from the home,
we go clear out past where this road is and that's about 100 feet out.
And in some cases, our home are even susceptible out to 200 feet,
depending on what the fuel conditions are.
When considering the first 5 feet of the home ignition zone,
we need to start with the home first.
What materials are being used to construct that home?
When we're in a high fire risk area, a lot of zoning regulations now require that
homes are made from fire resistant materials.
Choose materials that are made out of rock, concrete, or composites
that are resistant to fire.
We should also consider vegetation within that first 5 feet.
We want to make sure weeds and wild plants don't come up against the home as they're
a great place to ignite a fire.
So even though this home is constructed of pretty fire resistant materials,
including this metal down spout, there are a few things we could improve upon.
For instance, this hedge of dogwoods will come right up against the house,
especially as these plants mature.
And as we pan back a little bit further, we can see our propane lines
in our hose bins and all of our connections to the home
will come in contact with those plants as they mature.
When landscaping, we want to consider
where we are about 30 feet out in the home ignition zone.
Hardscapes such as this rock in this bed are great options to provide an attractive
feature to the landscape, while minimizing fires ability to travel towards the house.
Prior to constructing this home, this whole area was dense brush.
After the home was completed, this brush was removed to create more
defensible space and drought tolerant grasses such as dryland pasture or
cabin mixes where planted here to create an attractive vegetative feature that was
also easily managed as we want to make sure that out fuel loads are low and that
fire can't spread quickly towards the house.
This area has been recently cleared of vegetation.
As you can see, we have a refuse pile of branches, roots, and other vegetation
waiting to be hauled off.
This should always be stored away from the home.
Although sometimes we may think its convenient to store fire wood or other
items on our decks, or underneath them, it's never a good idea when considering
wild fires.
Some other things to consider when landscaping in fire danger zones,
are we may want taller vegetative features,
we may even want to preserve what was originally there.
One thing that a home owner can do to preserve what was originally there is
make sure they've build space in between each vegetative feature.
In conclusion, the information in this video is great starting point for you to
protect your home from wildfire, however, there's plenty more information out there.