Prepare for Fire Season Now

Today we are continuing our discussion about preparing for what may very will be a intense wild fire season this summer. WSU Regional Extension Specialist in Forestry Steve McConnell shares some easy things for rural home owners to do now to be better prepared in case of a fire.
McConnell: “A lot of it is about very simple things like having a drive way large enough for a fire truck to get and pull out. If they can’t get in, they won’t go in and your house may burned because of that. Signage — you need to have your address posted so that emergency vehicles can find it so they know where the problem is.”
McConnell says that firewise.org has a lot of good information for home owners to be proactive about wild fire. Another aspect of fighting fire he says that needs to be considered is when there is a major fire and outside resources come in to help fight the fire.
McConnell: “People weren’t very accustom to the structure and the organization of the firefighting crews. So the Forest Service or the DNR would move in and some people would view them as an occupying army. They wanted to keep people out of certain areas. A lot of conflict with locals. A lot of local people have a good sense of what to do in a fire; and they wanted to go and do that in the absences of resources. The organizational heads were concern about people getting hurt or being missing in a fire. There was a lot of not good communication and clear understanding of what everybody does. Everybody had the same goal to get the fire out but there was just different organizational approaches.”

 

There is a Fire Behavior Workshop happening on Thursday, April 30th in Dayton, Washington. Go to http://ext100.wsu.edu/spokane/forestry/classes-events/ to sign up and get details about the workshop, which is put on by Washington State University Extension in cooperation with Oregon State University Extension.