Pledge to be firewise, prepare your home, and recreate outdoors responsibly
May is National Wildfire Awareness Month and a great time to prepare your home and community for the threat of wildfire. Wildfire in the southwest is inevitable but we can help reduce the impacts by making our homes and properties "firewise", recreating responsibly outdoors, and educating ourselves and others about the importance of fire resilient landscapes.
Prepare your home and property by removing excess pine needles from gutters, your yard, and near your home. Create "defensible" space, or a buffer between your home and your property by clearing away plant debris, combustible material, and dead vegetation. Check out your personal Wildland Fire Action Guide.
Be aware of fire restrictions when recreating outdoors and fire danger levels. If fire danger is high, choose alternatives to a campfire such as a camp stove or LED flame lights. If campfires are allowed and you choose to have one, keep a bucket of water and a shovel nearby at all times. NEVER leave the fire unattended and completely extinguish the campfire when you leave by ensuring that NOTHING is still smoldering. NEVER throw out cigarette butts, regardless of what time of year it is. Be careful of parking or driving your car or ATV in tall, dry, vegetation, such as grass. The hot underside of the vehicle can start a fire.
Thinning, prescribed, and resource managed fires are all great opportunities for land managers to help our landscapes become more resilient. All of these come with risks but are necessary if we want to avoid catastrophic wildfires that threaten our communities. Certain types of fire are necessary in a ponderosa pine forest ecosystem. However, over one hundred years of fire suppression and over-logging have created diseased and unhealthy forests that are more prone to the threat of catastrophic wildfire. Land managers are working hard to remedy it but can only do so much, especially when development continues to grow in the wildland urban interface (WUI). If you have a home in the wildland urban interface, please be extra diligent by preparing your property every year before fire season.