How to Protect Your Home From Wildfires

STORY BY AMANDA MILICI, TAHOE RESOURCE CONSERVATION DISTRICT

Mike Vollmer

Living at Lake Tahoe is special. It means living amongst endless recreation opportunities and living with the peace and serenity created by our shared body of pristine water. However, living at Lake Tahoe also means living with something else: wild re.

By owning a home in a Wildland Urban Interface (the zone where natural environments intersect human development), Tahoe residents take on the extra respon-sibility of protecting their homes from wild re. Although the thought of losing a home is scary and tragic, there is a lot residents can do to increase their home’s wild re resiliency.

In January 2021, a team of California and Nevada scientists and practitioners published the Wild re Home Retro t Guide. Filled with speci c recommen-dations for each component of the home, the guide empowers residents to address their home’s vulnerabilities.

In the past, we’ve focused a lot on vegetation and defensible space. Of course, good defensible space is absolutely necessary, but we need to remember that our homes themselves are combustible, too.

During a wild re, 60 to 90 percent of home loss is due to embers. Depending on a re’s intensity and wind speed, embers can travel more than a mile ahead of a ame front. us, even a home blocks away from a re can be at risk of ignition. e Wild re Home Retro t Guide reco-

mmends a coupled approach that to vents), to full retro ts (replacing a wood-shake roof). e Wild re Home Retro t Guide is beyond informative. It’s empowering. It allows residents to look at their home, see what they can do to protect it, and feel more in control of their wild re risk. e Wild re Home Retro t Guide is free and can be downloaded at tahoelivingwith re.com. n

considers both the vegetation surrounding a home and the home’s construction materials. It includes recommendations for ember-vulnerable components of a home including roofs, rain gutters, eaves, vents, siding, skylights, windows, decks, chimneys and fences. ese recommendations range from routine maintenance (removing pine needles from roofs and gutters), to DIY projects (installing 1/8th-inch metal mesh screening

The guide was funded by CAL FIRE California Climate Investments. Contributing agencies to the Guide include University of Nevada, Reno Extension; University of California Cooperative Extension; Tahoe Resource Conservation District; Tahoe Network of Fire Adapted Communities; Tahoe Fire and Fuels Team; and Tahoe Living With Fire.