Welcome to Wildfire Wednesdays #5. We hope you’ve been enjoying all the wonderful spring weather and taking some time to be outdoors. With that beautiful weather, we’ve experienced a few red flag (high fire danger) days in the last week. I hope you are feeling prepared for this year’s fire season, and if not we have some resources to help!
Best, Sam
This week:
A profile of a Fire Adapted New Mexico Learning Network (FACNM) leader in the Zuni Mountains area and how his community is working towards fire adaptation.
Fact sheets about making your home more fire resistant to wildfire from the Insurance Institute for Business and Home Safety.
Wildfire Coloring Sheets from the Smokey Generation
Upcoming Home Ignition Zone Webinar
FACNM Leader Profile
Ron Schali, one of our FACNM leaders from Timberlake Ranch in northwestern New Mexico, has been working with FACNM leader Mary Jo Wallen and the Timberlake Fire Mitigation and Forest Health Committee to make incremental progress toward wildfire preparedness. Ron shared three simple and effective pieces of advice for building support in your community:
Start with the low-hanging fruit.
Find projects that already have support and people on board and use those to build momentum toward areas that may be more challenging.
Show off your completed projects as educational tools to get others interested.
NFPA Wildfire Resistant Building Fact Sheets
Check out this video to see how the IIBHS conducts its research by simulating a wildfire and learning how houses ignite.
Once you have removed the leaves and needles from the first five feet around your home, where should you start with changes to the building itself? The Insurance Institute for Business and Home Safety has created a great series of fact sheets that address specific aspects such as decks, roofing materials, and vents. These guides offer in-depth information and what can be done to make your home more fire-resistant.
You can find the fact sheets on our website on the Prepare page:
For more information please join our webinar on how to make your home less vulnerable to wildfire!
The Home Ignition Zone - What to do to prep your home for fire season
May 12, 2020 01:00 PM Mountain Time
Wildland Fire Coloring Sheets from the Smokey Generation
To help out with all the kids (and adults) at home these days, every day for a month the Smokey Generation (an awesome wildfire oral history project) created a coloring sheet that focuses on an aspect of wildland fire from around the world. Each sheet has a small fact about wildland fire and a link to more information. As a bonus, many of the sheets are translated into Spanish, French, Catalan, and German!
http://thesmokeygeneration.com/coloring-sheets
Upcoming Webinars
The Home Ignition Zone - What to do to prep your home for fire season
May 12, 2020 01:00 PM Mountain Time (US and Canada)
In this 60 minute webinar Sam Berry of the Forest Stewards Guild will show you how to prepare your home for fire season. Research has shown that there are simple and easy actions you can take in the areas closest to your home to drastically lessen the chances of it catching fire in a wildfire. Tune-in to learn about the Home Ignition Zones and find out what you can do!