LAKE TAHOE, Calif./Nev. - With several feet of snow on the ground, preparing for wildfire may not be on your winter "to-do" list. But, winter is actually a great time to plan your home hardening retrofits.
As the flowers start blooming and days get warmer, it means fire danger increases. Living alongside the wilderness in a region where fire is part of the landscape, spring is an important time for residents to get prepared for wildfire.
Each spring, re-evaluating defensible space and home hardening techniques is part of life in the basin. While it’s important to focus on the vegetation around the home, it’s also key to reduce the risk from the infrastructure as both play important roles in protecting property.
Several fire scientists and agencies from both California and Nevada collaborated to produce a step-by-step 20-page guide for homeowners to retrofit their homes to be more suited, resilient and less vulnerable to ignition from wildfire. It’s called the Wildfire Home Retrofit Guide which was funded primarily by Cal Fire.
The Tahoe Network of Fire Adapted Communities, along with many other amazing authors and contributors, helped produce the Wildfire Home Retrofit Guide: How to Harden Homes for Wildfire.
The guide includes detailed recommendations on how to retrofit homes to withstand wildfire. Each section contains an explanation of how every home component is vulnerable to wildfire and what can be done to improve that component. It can be downloaded for free HERE.
In conjunction with the release of the guide are three virtual Wildfire Home Retrofit workshops to educate the public, building professionals, and fire professionals and educators about retrofitting homes to withstand wildfire.