Fire Break – Wildfire Safety Blog

Upper Midwest wildfires raise concern for community safety

Recent wildfires in Minnesota and Wisconsin highlight the threat to homes and property in communities across the Midwest. According to news reports, the Germann Road Fire in Douglas and Bayfield Counties in northwest Wisconsin burned 9,000 acres while just across the border in northern Minnesota, the Green Valley Fire has consumed more than 7,000 acres. Dry and windy conditions continue to contribute to an outbreak of wildfires across both states, and many homes and commercial properties remain under threat.

The Germann Road Fire is one of the largest Wisconsin has seen in the last couple of decades, according to the Wisconsin Department of Natural Resources. Red-flag warnings have been issued across most of Wisconsin and Minnesota, and residents are being urged to use extreme caution when participating in outdoor activities including camping.

Many local residents, however, have already taken steps to reduce their wildfire risk. Using proven principles for wildfire safety, 15 communities in Wisconsin and 14 in Minnesota have participated for several years in the national Firewise Communities/USA® Recognition Program. Located about 10 miles northwest of the Germann Road Fire in Wisconsin, Potawatomi Estates has been a recognized Firewise Communities/USA site since 2010.

A list of all Wisconsin and Minnesota Firewise-recognized sites can be found on the Firewise website.

Wildfire doesn’t have to burn everything in its path. A comprehensive Firewise tips checklist for homeowners is available, along with tips on how to reduce your risk.

 

Video from DNR in Minnesota on the importance of being Firewise. 

USA Today article offers dire wildfire predictions

The wildfire season is off to a fortuitously slow start; wildfires have burned an estimated 175,000 acres this year in the U.S., the lowest number to date in a decade, according to the National Interagency Fire Center. Experts have attributed this low figure to unusually cool weather patterns in the southeastern U.S., where the season's fires tend to form first.

Other areas of the country might not be as fortunate. A recent article in USA Todaypredicts that the West could get walloped, as "significant fire potential" is expected in nine states. "We've had above average temperatures and below-average precipitation in the West, a combination that doesn't bode well for a good season," Secretary of Agriculture Tom Vilsack told the newspaper. California could be in particular trouble, since the state has already experienced a substantial increase in fire activity when compared to the average acreage burned for this time of year. 

Molly Mowery, NFPA's program manager for Fire Adapted Communities and International Outreach, tells USA Today that taking preventative measures now could safeguard homes from ruin. NFPA's Firewise Communities Program offers an array of principles that can reduce the risk of wildfire damage.

For more information on these principles, visit the Firewise website.

-Fred Durso

'Talk to the hand' and learn your state's progress in the Firewise Challenge

1,000 Safer Places:  the Firewise Challenge

As published earlier this year, the National Fire Protection Association through the national Firewise Communities/USA support program is promoting the Firewise throwdown to challenge states and communities to reach for our national goal of 1,000 recognized Firewise Communities/USA® sites by the end of 2013. To learn more about this challenge and to monitor our nation's progress through the rest of the year please ‘talk to the hand’.

Patti Maguire joins NFPA’s Firewise Communities Program as regional advisor

We've just named Patti Maguire the Firewise advisor for our Southwest 2 Region to help expand our community wildfire safety activities! Patti will join the program’s five existing regional advisors and oversee Firewise activities in communities in Colorado, Kansas, New Mexico, Texas and Utah.

With the number and intensity of wildfires on the rise, there is greater need than ever before for people to take action to protect their families and homes from the threat of wildfires. Patti will work closely with our other advisors to help foster successful Firewise Communities/USA recognition by assisting sites that are new to the program and supporting the ongoing work of existing sites, in coordination with state forestry leadership. Due to her extensive background in forestry and wildfire prevention, Patti will be able to provide important information and technical support to communities throughout the country.

Patti began her career in forestry as a wildfire prevention and forest health consultant. Her experience includes working as a wildland firefighter for the USDA Forest Service and as a park ranger for the Bureau of Land Management. She would later become Summit County, Colorado’s wildfire mitigation officer and work as a consultant and project coordinator for Colorado Blue Logs in Kremmling, Colorado. As a member of the USDA Forest Service Wildfire Prevention and Education Team, Patti has traveled through the West and Great Plains states on interagency teams to provide intensive public awareness campaign in communities experiencing extreme wildfire conditions. 

Welcome Patti!

Google Reader to close down; find out how to keep your NFPA blog RSS feeds coming

Google announced recently that Google Reader is closing down. This popular RSS feed reader will be history on July 1, 2013, which means you’ve got a little more than two months to move your Google Reader subscriptions to a new RSS reader. You don't want to miss out on any of our blog posts in your RSS readers, right?

In the PC World video below, Nick Barber shows you how to migrate your Google Reader subsciptions to a new RSS reader. He uses Takeout, Google’s way of providing your information in a format you can take with you to other programs. He turns his Google Reader subscriptions into a file that can then be used with different RSS readers. 

 

 

Looking for more information about Google Reader’s impending shutdown? You can read about three alternatives to Google Reader here. 

If all of this sounds too complicated but you still don't want to miss out, you can always subscribe to our blog's RSS feeds again, adding them to another RSS feeder directly from our blog. 

Wildland fire data reporting initiative

This past November, NFPA’s Wildland Fire Operations Division with the help of the National Association of State Foresters (NASF) and the US Fire Administration (USFA) convened a group of 18 wildland fire data reporting experts from local, state and federal organizations  to discuss different wildland fire data collection, reporting and research initiatives that are occurring throughout the United States.

The fundamental purpose of the meeting was to answer this complex question: How can wildland fire organizations consolidate existing wildland fire agency and national fire incident reporting system data sets effectively and efficiently to produce an accurate national cohesive wildland fire risk profile?

For more information about this ongoing initiative please visit this NFPA link to download a copy of the meeting report.

Outreach to youth yields innovative ideas for future wildfire education programs

In the Australian study, Children's Knowledge of Bushfire Risk, the authors recognize that to develop bushfire education programs that accommodate the knowledge and perspective of kids - they must be given an opportunity to voice their views.  And in the book, The Power of Positive Deviance - How Unlikely Innovators Solve the World's Toughest Problems, the authors provide the principles needed to achieve a successful social paradigm shift; which includes involving stakeholders and going to improbable places and to unlikely people to find solutions; letting community members provide culturally appropriate expertise; and the concept of don't do anything about me, without me.   

Incorporating those ideas along with input from other successful disaster preparedness programs, NFPA's Firewise Program staff conducted a series of six interactive workshops in Colorado and Texas during the summer of 2012.  The workshops were an opportunity to talk with middle and high school students and their parents that had been recently impacted by a wildland fire. 

In those sessions, the youth we met with shared what they know and don't know about wildfire, the areas they want to learn about, and the best ways to reach and motivate them to undertake actions that will contribute to reducing wildfire risk now and in the future.

At the six two-hour sessions, Firewise staff had the opportunity to talk with 105 students and parents.  Invaluable insight was gained on how to target this demographic and what they want in future programs.  This age group has voluminous potential to motivate both their peers and adults to implement mitigation actions that will make their communities better prepared for a wildfire.

In my next blog I'll share some of what we learned from the students open and honest comments about how to connect and engage with them.  The full Engaging Youth in Reducing Wildfire Risk - Community Conversation Workshop Findings and Research can be accessed on the Youth and Families tab on the Firewise site. 

Wildfire education programs for youth: research findings

 
In yesterday's blog on NFPA's Wildland Fire Operations Division's report Engaging Youth in Reducing Wildfire Risk I provided a quick look at the virtually nonexistence of wildfire programs for youth that focus on prevention, preparedness, mitigation and the science of the home ignition zone.  In this segment we'll focus on the topic's existing research.

During the summer of 2010, FEMA published Bringing Youth Preparedness Education to the Forefront:  A LIterature Review and Recommendations.  Their report found children can play a special role in communicating preparedness information to friends and family members, and children are seen as a trusted source of information, as well as good messengers.

Prior to the reports below (published 2008-2012), there was basically no research available on wildfire education programs for youth.  Authors of the Evolution of Smokey Bear report published in 2012, found the majority of programs for older children don't include personal and home safety information; and fail to address the science of home ignition.  The topic of wildfire is often wrapped into other curriculm, and is frequently a subtopic to a larger theme; while programs created by agencies and brought into schools are very difficult to fund, sustain and replicate.  None of the youth programs reviewed addressed the issue of children's needs when wildfire has impacted their homes and community.

Research on youth and wildfire education programs reviewed for the Firewise Program report include those listed below.  I highly recommend you read these excellent studies:

• Linking Youth Wildfire Education to Fire-Adapted Human Communities in the U.S. (2010 – Jakes, Sturtevant, Monroe and Ballard)
• The Evolution of Smokey Bear:  Environmental Education About Wildfire for Youth (2012 - Ballard, Evans, Sturtevant, and Jakes)
• Minnesota and West Virginia Firewise in the Classroom: Youth Working with Communities to Adapt to Wildfire (2012 - Jakes)
• Addressing Student Trauma in the Wake of California Wildfires (2008-Pang, Madueno, Atlas, Stratton, Oliger and Page)

After finding a lack of information on what youth believe they want and need regarding wildfire safety, information and resources; Firewise Communities Program staff engaged teens and parents in six interactive conversational workshops on the topic. Tomorrow we'll share what we learned from those groups in part three of this series.

Young artist's wildfire artwork to be featured monthly throughout 2013

Long regarded as a progressive leader in community-based wildfire awareness efforts, the Napa Firewise Program in northern California developed a children's art contest around the theme Wildfire Hurts Everyone.  The goal of the contest was to capture and share through art the dangers of wildfire as visualized by young artists. Roger Archey with Napa Firewisedescribed the artwork as, "Sincere and very sobering."

Once a month over the next year we'll highlight one of the contest's young artists in our Fire Break Blog. This month's featured artist is 8 year-old Aurora Schueler.

Sharing the artwork monthly provides multiple opportunities to remind parents about the importance of having family conversations about projects they can all do together to reduce wildfire risks, what causes a wildfire, and the importance of everyone knowing the family's evacuation plan.

Our thanks to Napa Firewise a non-profit foundation dedicated to wildfire prevention and awareness for sharing their project with NFPA's Firewise Communities Program. We're looking forward to introducing you to eleven more pieces of artwork created by these wonderful young artists!

Updates to fire code proposed following Waldo Canyon Wildfire

Photo:  R. Sangosti - The Denver Post 12/12/12

Almost six months after the June 26, Waldo Canyon Fire in Colorado Springs, CO, the City Council gave preliminary approval yesterday to the first reading of the proposed update to the city's current fire code that will be applicable to rebuilds and new construction within the city's wildland/urban interface.  The vote was 6 to 1 with one abstaining from the vote.  The changes have been recommended as a process to improve safety conditions and reduce structure losses in future wildfires.  A final reading will take place January 8, 2013.  The new ordinance applies to both construction materials and surrounding vegetation.

Yesterday's vote follows the department's Division of the Fire Marshal hosting nine public meetings with more than 600 residents, over the past 90 days; along with coordination and collaboration with the local Home Builders Association, City Council and the Mayor. 

The Waldo Canyon Fire destroyed 345 homes and is the most destructive wildfire in the state's history.  The fire is responsible for two fatalities and the evacuation of more than 32,000 residents.  It's estimated that there are 36,485 residences in the city's wildland/urban interface.

In 2003, the city passed a Class A roofing ordinance that applies to the entire city for all new and replacement roofs and repairs greater than 25% of the total roof area.

The City of Colorado Springs has eleven communities that participate in the Firewise Communities/USA Recognition Program.