There are some fire resistant plants that can be planted:
http://www.readyforwildfire.org/Fire-Safe-Landscaping/
However, if you are surrounded by acres of dry grass, the risk is still high. Some grassy parks rent herds of goats to mow the dry grass.
Rom, you’ve seen pictures of the Golden Gate Bridge, right? The San Francisco Bay is about a mile wide there at the narrowest point. Fire would have a tough time jumping the Golden Gate. Never say never, but a mile of water makes a pretty good fire break.
@“Cardinal Fang” oh ok, got it. Yes, I’ve seen pictures but like I said, I’m just bad with spatial maps. Thank you for the explanation.
If/when locals know of good places to donate to, please let me/us know.
Also, I’ve seen frustratingly little coverage of this on national news. I don’t know why the fires out west have been essentially ignored this summer. Sure, there’s some reporting but nothing like the coverage of the hurricanes, etc.
If you live in a rural area, you can keep a fire boundary around your house, with fire-resistant this and that, but this fire burned a densely populated suburban neighborhood to the ground. You can’t keep 20 feet of firebreak around your house if it’s only 15 feet from your house to the lot line.
Have a look at the before and after in this article:
http://www.latimes.com/la-me-santa-rosa-slider-20171009-htmlstory.html
There has not been so much loss of human life due to the Western fires so far. Smoke, loss of beautiful nature, acres of forests gone… but mostly the humans were ok. This Napa/Sonoma/Santa Rosa fire is the deadliest so far and caused so much damage to the economy
There is really nothing one can do in such densely populated areas. Some new subdivisions here have to have fire sprinklers installed by the code… betcha the Santa Rosa Hilton had them… did not do much good when it is a wall of fire marching toward you.
Fire resistant roofs are required by code in California, but with the embers blowing around the situation is tough. Last month I drove through the burned area on the road to Yosemite. There were miles of burned area with a saved ranch house surrounded by blackened trees. Those fire retardant drops are amazingly accurate and effective.
Fire resistant roofs are required now, but some homeowners haven’t replaced old shake roofs with new fire retardant roofs yet.
Visiting with family in outer Richmond, SF. Due to the wind, there was ash flying around and the odor from the smoke was strong enough to cause some schools to close because they did not have air conditioning and the air quality was deemed unhealthy. The photos and news from the areas affected are heartbreaking.
A friend I dined with tonite in SF said her hospital at UCSF in Parnassus was getting soot from the wildfires! She is very concerned. She’s a critical care and lung doc.
I have a close friend who lives part time BVI and Sonoma County. In Sept he was in Sonoma desperately trying to find out if his little house on Tortola was destroyed. It took 10 days to get through to someone…yes severely damaged.
He is now at a friends house under mandatory evacuation desperately trying to find out if his Sonoma County home survived. They were woken up by neighbors going up and down street last night honking horns to get out.
And, there was an earthquake near San Jose yesterday! This all scares me.
BIL/SIL are in Santa Rosa, still between the advancing lines of fire. We’re just hoping their neighborhood survives, although it appears that much of the rest of the city has not. The devastation is just grim.
I have been living through this since Sunday night. We woke up to the smell of smoke inside our home, although the actual fires were miles away. We are lucky. We still have our house. We know many who have lost everything.
Everyone in our neighborhood is still uneasy, since evacuation orders could still come at any time. I barely slept last night; I didn’t want to sleep through any evacuation orders. Hopefully the fires around here will be contained very soon.
Along with many high schoolers around here, D is volunteering at one of the several shelters that have been set up around our county. It’s been heartwarming to see all of the kids jump in and help wherever they can. There is no school today again, and we’ve been told there may be no school tomorrow.
One woman in Santa Rosa told a reporter that they little warning to evacuate. Had they not decided to leave their house when they did, they might not have made it. The fire advanced that quickly.
We live with red flag warnings popping up throughout the year here in CA but it’s worse in Sept-Oct. Last night, DH and I talked about organizing our important things that we would need to grab. Just last week I had decided to start scanning all of my photos and important documents. These recent events makes it more urgent.
@lilmom yes, many of our friends had zero warning to evacuate and were lucky to leave with just the just the clothes on their backs. I fear many more didn’t make it out because many were asleep when the firestorm broke out. At last count, there are about 100 people missing. Firefighters have been so busy just trying to get the fires under control - they haven’t had much time to look for people yet.
We have a bag of stuff by the door and are ready to go, if necessary.
These fires are just horrible. Some of the people had so little time to get out. Our friends in Sonoma are ok for now, but are ready to go if needed. We woke up to fog this morning in Southern California which will hopefully help the fire in Anaheim Hills. I always worry about fire in October as we had deadly wildfires come through San Diego in 2003 and 2007 that destroyed thousands of homes.
The news coming out of this thread and newspapers are so sad. it sounds like this was a very fast moving fire. Devastating.
Mr. B just texted me that he thinks we are not immune from this. I anticipate that in the next few weeks there will be a major push for us to get that fireproof roof that also makes electricity. And a few more trees will be removed… we have not had an urban wildfire here in my neck of the Seattle suburbia woods, but if this weather pattern continues, we can be in trouble, too.
The fire retardant roof is essential. Years ago I recall seeing aerial footage of a fire in Laguna Hills. The same area had burned houses and houses still standing. The houses burned had the old shake shingles.
My friend in Los Alamos installed a metal, fire resistant roof. When fires swept their area, her house was the ONLY one in the neighborhood remaining.