People living, working, and recreating in the wildland urban interface, or WUI, feel the effects of wildland fire. Every year families are evacuated, and structures are destroyed as the result of wildland fires impacting this zone.
There are tools that can assist professionals and homeowners in mitigating the risk of damage from a wildland fire. Below are just a few of the available resources that can help make your home and property more adaptive to survive in the wildland urban interface zone.
Prepare and protect your home
Taking steps to make your home survivable and your community adaptable to wildfire helps protect firefighters too.
Prepare your community
Humans are the largest contributing factor to wildfire ignitions, causing around 87 percent of all wildfires nationally every year.
Wildfire risk planning
To assess your homes survivability, you must first analyze wildfire ignition risk, hazards, and the values at risk to your property and community.
What can you do? Wildfire Risk to Communities is a free, easy-to-use website with interactive maps, charts, and resources to help communities understand, explore, and reduce wildfire risk.
Additional information:
- Community Mitigation Assistance Team (CMAT)
- Firewise
- Institute for Business and Home Safety Wildfire Page
- Living with Fire
Plan for wildfire
As the weather becomes warmer and wildland vegetation, or fuels, begin to dry out, it is time to plan for the wildfires.
During a wildfire, embers cause most home ignitions. Residents can harden homes minimizing property damage and protecting firefighters. Help reduce putting firefighters and communities at risk by hardening your home to ember intrusion and creating defensible space on private property.
- Get Ready
- Become Firewise
- Learn about wildfire-resistance
- Understand, explore, and reduce wildfire risk to your community
Mitigate wildfire impacts
Find out how you can mitigate the impact of wildfires in your area. There are numerous online resources available like these, to name a few:
- Wildfire mitigation - Colorado State Forest Service (CSFS)
- Strategies in wildfire mitigation - National Association of Counties (NACo)
- Grants for wildfire mitigation - Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA)
