Spring cleaning for wildfire preparedness
- visarrazin
- May 17
- 2 min read
Updated: May 19
Now is time to prepare your yard for the wildfire season. Here are some tips to prevent a wildfire reaching your yard, especially from flying embers, from spreading to your home:
Clean under your deck: Leaves and other natural debris can accumulate under decks. It is also a place where we like to store flammable things like pieces of lumber, propane tanks, plastic furniture. To avoid embers reaching those items, clean the space under decks and sheath the base of your deck with fire-resistant materials.
Clean your gutters: Gutters are also a prone area for accumulation of natural flammable debris such as leaves. Make sure your gutters are clear of debris which will also return them to initial state for proper drainage.
Clean and maintain your lawn: Remove leaves, branches, debris that have accumulated and ensure your grass is kept moist and is cut regularly to reduce the risk of fire spread.
Relocate combustible materials: Ensure no combustible materials is located within 10 m of your house such as firewood, pieces of lumber, plastic furniture, propane tanks.
Prune trees: Remove dead branches and prune trees up to 2 m from the ground to avoid ground fire for spreading higher up.
Assess your landscaping: a lot can be achieved by firesmarting your landscape! Place gravel over 1.5 m around your house, replace your wood fence touching the house with a metal one, remove trees and bushes located within 1.5 m of your house, ensure your plants are not highly flammable
Assess your house: To go even further into firesmarting your property, replace your plastic gutters with metal ones, install a non combustible material above your foundation on the perimeter of your house, install screen on the vents of your house.
Small efforts can lead to higher chances of saving your house in case of a wildfire! More info can be found at https://firesmartbc.ca/7-tips-to-firesmart-your-property-this-spring/.
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