Fire mitigation removes fuels around your house that can create increased heat and exposure to your home in the event of a wildland fire. Wildland fires include grass fires, brush fires and forest fires. The impact of these
fires can be minimized or mitigated by creating a defensible space and taking other actions to reduce the intensity of the fire and help fire crews fight fires that may threaten your home.
Defensible space is an area around your house where fuels and vegetation are treated, cleared or reduced to slow the spread of fire. This area will allow firefighters to better protect your home from an advancing wildfire. Without defensible
space, firefighters cannot safely fight the fire and they cannot put their lives at risk to protect property. By creating a defensible space, you increase the odds of your house surviving a fire. Thinning trees, removing brush, mowing grass,
and ‘limbing up’ (pruning lower branches) trees near the house reduces the intensity of the fire around your home. Creating breaks in the vegetation, including breaks between trees, around your house provides natural barriers that help firefighters
slow the fire and reduce potential loss.
Because trees and shrubs continue to grow, trees drop their leaves and needles, plants die and new plants sprout up, defensible space requires annual maintenance. As a homeowner, you can help prepare your house for the threat of wildfires by performing the following mitigation activities annually.
By creating a defensible space around your house you increase the potential for your house to withstand a fire and make your home more defensible by firefighters.