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Follow on Google News | Lawn Sprinklers On Your Roof ???The fire season is in full bloom and the winds are hauling - are you prepared?
By: Scott Stevenson The fire season is in full bloom and the winds are hauling – are you prepared? For three days in late October, 2003, my wife and I sat on our rear deck watching what was once a small signal fire from a lost hunter turn into a roaring thousand-foot wall of black smoke and flames consuming everything within its path. Fueled by seventy miles per hour gusts and overgrown dry brush, the Cedar Fire – the largest recorded forest fire (at the time) in the State of California - quickly raced forty miles to the coast and spread as far to the north and to the south as we could see. With the flames a hundred yards from our rear door, we decided it was time to evacuate. Two days after the Cedar Fire my wife and I returned to our property to discover that our home had turned into six inches of gray ash. The only thing standing was a blackened stone chimney – a headstone marking the grave of a deceased home . . . our home. _ _ _ _ _ While sitting on our rear deck for those three days, we had a clear view of the approaching flames and saw up-close which fire prevention methods worked, which slowed the flames, and which had no effect at all. The following is a list of what we observed while sitting on our rear deck: maybe it will help you. These observations were of a forest fire, not a city fire, and pertain to houses located within areas (forests, dirt roads, etc.) that were difficult for the fire crews or aircraft to protect. At the time of the Cedar Fire there were no ground crews or aircraft available to help protect our community. On the other hand I see no reason why these observations would not also apply to city homes. 1. Winds: 2. Fire Gel: We noticed that two neighbors used a spray-on fire gel - covering their roof, walls, and windows - just before evacuating their homes. One of the homes burned, one survived. Fire gel is effective for eight to twelve hours (depending on the manufacturer) 3. Defensible Space: A definite must. From our view on the rear deck of our house we could see that the neighbors who had created a defensible space around their home had a much better chance of surviving the Cedar Fire than those that hadn’t. Defensible space is a space around your house that is free of combustibles or as free as practical - cut dry grasses, remove all brush, trim all low hanging branches of trees (you don’t want to give the fire a path to the tree tops) and/or plant fire resistive landscaping – red apple, ice plant, gravel, etc. The fire department recommends a minimum of one hundred feet of defensible space. I would say, the bigger the better. Defensible space doesn’t stop at the edge of the house or deck. Don’t forget to remove deck furniture, or plants, or firewood stacked next to the house, or anything else that may catch fire and then spread to the walls. Using a pair of binoculars, I saw a fence post about a hundred feet from a neighbor’s house catch fire. The fire then moved from the post to the horizontal top rail of the fence, then to the next post, then to the next top rail, then to the next post and it kept moving in this fashion along the fence until the fire reached the house where it caught the deck on fire. Try to remove or at least interrupt any path the fire can use to cross over your defensible space. 4. House Construction: Another thing I noticed after the fire when I checked out some of the houses that had survived (built with the current fire resistive methods), was that the heat from the fire had cracked the outer pane of glass on the multiple-pane windows while the inner pane of glass remained intact, keeping the fire from spreading to the inside of the house. Multiple pane windows definitely work. 5. Lawn Sprinklers: One of our close neighbors installed two rotating lawn sprinklers on their roof before they evacuated. Their house survived. If you plan on fighting a forest fire with a garden hose - forget it! The volume of water from a garden hose is almost nothing compared to the force of the heat, flames, and smoke of a forest fire. But if you want to wet down your roof and walls or set up lawn sprinklers . . . what’s the harm? Be careful not to drain your water tank in case fire fighters make it to your home and need water to fight the fire. Consider leaving the well running. 6. Vehicles: 7. Evacuation: By Scott Stevenson Scott Stevenson is the author of LOOKS EASY ENOUGH, A Joyful Memoir of Overcoming Disease, Divorce, and Disaster. The book is an inspirational tale of having your house, but not your spirit, destroyed in the Cedar Fire. http://www.lookseasyenough.com # # # Small publishing house, specializing in memoirs and works of nonfiction. We take pride in everything we do. End
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