Firescaping Your Home and This is Wildfire

FIRESCAPING YOUR HOME by Adrienne Edwards and Rachel Schleiger is “A Manual for Readiness in Wildfire Country.” The first inside picture is beautiful – hills covered with trees and grasses with a suburban-like street in the foreground – but it could also be dangerous in this age of increasing temperatures, burn bans, and drought. Edwards and Schleiger offer perspective about fire and its dangers while also focusing on habitat and providing useful information on what to plant, where, and when. Their comments and extensive charts, however, are focused on plants (trees, shrubs, and grasses) indigenous to the West Coast, specifically for Washington State, Oregon or California environs, although some points (reduced wildlife habitat, increased erosion, fewer natural windbreaks) do also apply generally. They discuss, for example, the use of succulent gardens which can be both fire resistant and drought tolerant. A different section outlines how to determine prevailing wind patterns where you live. They also provide links to national databases and maps like the Understand Risk web page, the FEMA’s Wildfire web page, and Risk Factor from First Street Foundation. Throughout, Edwards and Schleiger include numerous colorful photos and drawings, diagrams, and highlighted, boxed summaries. There is a wealth of information in the text itself as well as several pages with suggested Resources and Further Reading, Source Notes, and an Index spanning a dozen pages.

Local Links for Travis County: Travis County Wildfire Hazard Map;  Texas A&M AgriLife Extension with suggestions on what not to plant and Preparing for Wildfires pdf. 

THIS IS WILDFIRE by Nick Mott and Justin Angle appears on the August Next Big Idea Book Club list. The authors, a journalist podcaster and a professor at the University of Montana College of Business, provide a balanced perspective into “How to Protect Yourself, Your Home, and Your Community in the Age of Heat.” They begin with background history (e.g., sections on Public Land, Big Burn, and Yellowstone Fire) as well as information about Firefighters, the stress they face, and how to help them. Next, Mott and Angle describe Forest Management and various steps related to Fire Ecology, noting that some burns are needed in that they encourage ecosystem renewal and growth. At roughly two-thirds of the way into the text, the authors discuss “What You Can Do” in terms of contacting local or national authorities and adapting by changing people’s behavior so as to live more resiliently with fire. They note, for example, “by 2010, about thirty million homes, occupied by sixty million people, were in the WUI” (wildland urban interface) and then describe the home ignition zones: immediate (within five feet), intermediate (six to thirty feet) and extended (thirty to one hundred feet). Their checklists (e.g., keep trees at least 10 feet from structures like fences or outbuildings) seem rather unrealistic given that many suburban lots are fifty feet or less in width. The authors themselves note the difficulty in instituting change, even providing an estimate that “it would cost $6 billion to replace all roofs in the WUI in the country with fire resistant materials.” Some resources and web links are noted which may provide more targeted, practical information for the average homeowner.