Using Your Land to Protect Your Home From Fires | SERVPRO® of Clatsop, Columbia Counties

7/23/2021 (Permalink)

If your home is damaged by fire or any other reason, SERVPRO of Clatsop, Columbia Counties is ready and able to repair any damage.

Every property owner fears seeing their property go up in flames, and wildfires cause home damage more often than you might realize. A wildfire can spread incredibly quickly, and with so much of our world made of flammable material, it’s a marvel that we can even contain them at all.

But there are a few things we can do preventively to give ourselves a fighting chance against wildfires, aside from the obvious help that would come by us simply becoming more careful.

Today we’re talking about one of those things: “defensible space.”

What Is Defensible Space?

Despite the galactic possibilities of the name, it has nothing to do with NASA missiles.

Defensible space is the bumper area you can create around your home by removing the fuel a wildfire needs to spread quickly (like dead leaves and branches), adding things like flame-retardant gravel and pavement in areas surrounding your home, and practicing responsible planting and pruning.

You can think of defensible space as a barrier of protection (aka defense), designed to safeguard your home from wildfire by retarding the spread of fire as it comes nearer. It also gives firefighters their best chance of stopping a wildfire before it reaches the walls of your home.

Defensible space is actually required by law in Oregon, so make yourself aware of the regulations and codes so you can be in compliance.

Why Defensible Space Matters

We know all too well that Oregon has experienced recent wildfires (we lost over a million acres of land in the 2,215 fires in 2020), but it’s not only the West Coast—there were 59,000 wildfires across the United States in 2020.

Even removing California and its devastating 10,000+ fires from the statistics, the average number of wildfires per state in 2020 was still almost 1,000. And the first half of 2021 has seen about 25% more fires than 2020 did in its first half.

We should do our part in whatever way we can to prevent wildfires, and defensible space is one more way we can be proactive.

If your home is damaged by fire of any sort, wild or not, SERVPRO is ready and able to repair the damage caused. Get in touch today to get the pros on your team.