SPOKANE, Wash. – Throughout the year, the Washington State Department of Natural Resources offers a free consultation with a firefighter to best equip your home to mitigate the risk of it burning down due to a wildfire. However, there are a few tips you can implement today to help lower your risk.
First and foremost, create a defensible space of about five feet where there’s no flammable objects.
“A lot of times we think it’s the big flames that burn homes down,” Guy Gifford with DNR said. “It’s actually what we call embers, little matches that get carried by the fire that can travel about a mile and light what we call burnable material.”
Burnable material can include dry vegetation, leftover wood from home improvement projects, bark-based mulch, or even certain types of trees and flowers. DNR and other local agencies created this guide to provide a comprehensive list of what types of plants are safe or hazardous.
Another way to reinforce the five-foot zone around your house is to install cemented walkways or paths that will stop the fire in its tracks.
“If it’s burning, it hits that five-foot zone and stops,” Gifford said. “So we’re really trying to keep the burning small and isolated.”
