By Grind Fire Defense
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02 Jan, 2022
In California (according to Verisk’s Wildfire Risk Analysis) there were more than 2 million properties at high to extreme wildfire risk in 2021, the largest number of properties of any U.S. state. In 2021, California wildfires burned more than 2.5 million acres, including at least 3,600 buildings. These fires cause devastation not only in remote areas but in our communities, where they destroy structures and take lives. Now more than ever it is important to create and maintain an area around your home that can slow or even stop the spread of wildfire. If one is going to live in or near a forest, one assumes a higher risk of fire. The best way to minimize that risk is to seriously and continually create and maintain defensible space. It’s not cheap. If it were, it would have been done already. “To get to where you have defensible space, it can be tens of thousands of dollars on an individual parcel,” Nick Goulette, executive director of the Watershed Research and Training Center, told E&E News . The center is part of the Fire Adapted Communities Learning Network that urges forest communities to “safely accept fire as part of the surrounding landscape.”