SAFE Landscapes program at Hart Park in Santa Clarita provides important fire safety information.

If you missed the SAFE Landscapes fire safety workshop at Hart Park in Santa Clarita this weekend, here are some tips from the workshop to help keep your property fire-safe.

First and foremost, it’s not IF we’re going to have wildfires, it’s WHEN.

We live between Wildfires.

Prepare. Respond. Restore.

Prepare for a possible wildfire by clearing brush, using proper building materials, and designing your landscaping to be fire resistant. According to the Mountains Recreation and Conservation Authority, if you live near a fire zone, pre-cut and label materials to cover your windows and vents and store them, along with the tools necessary to install them, in an easily accessible location. You can fill your rain gutters with water prior to evacuation by stuffing a sock filled with dirt or sand in the bottom of your home’s downspouts.

Respond to a wildfire situation by following police and fire deparment directives, including evacuation orders. If you’ve prepared properly, your risk of property damage should be greatly reduced. If you have animals or pets, be sure to read this animal evacuation brochure.

Restore landscaping after a wildfire by taking soil erosion, debris flow, and landslides into consideration. It may be necessary to make small channels or drains to deflect water and debris away from your home when it rains shortly after a wildfire. Use straw or hydraulic mulch for severely burned slopes. Some vegetation may recover naturally, and others should be removed. Plan your replanting efforts with fire safety in mind, as well as avoiding invasive plants.

Don’t Plant a Pest!

Planting right can not only help reduce damage from a wildfire, it can also help maintain our natural habitats from invasive plants and reduce the costs of removing these "pests" once they start to take over a natural area.

Invasive plants can increase fire hazards by creating additional fuel for fires to burn. A great example of this is Pampas Grass.

PlantRight.org has plenty of resources for learning about great alternatives to "pest" plants. You can also learn about alternatives for the Santa Clarita area at the California Invasive Plant Council.

Fire Resistant Plants

Both the types of plants used and the location of the plants are important in protecting your home from wildfire. Be sure to create a defensible space around your home if you live in a Wildland Urban Interface (WUI) zone, defined as the areas where development meets natural vegetated areas. Many Santa Clarita homes, including regular tract homes, back up to natural hillside areas.

Fire resistant plants typically:

• Can store water in leaves and stems.
• Produce limited dead and fine material.
• Have extensive, deep root systems for controlling erosion.
• Maintain high moisture content with limited watering.
• Are low growing.
• Have open loose branches with a low volume of total vegetation.

Flammable plants tend to retain large amounts of dead material, produce a large volume of litter, or contain volatile substances (oils, resins, wax, pitch).

DO NOT:

• Have trees hanging above your home, especially around the chimney. Take future growth into consideration when selecting trees to plant around your home.
• Have vines or other plant material growing on your home.
• Have dead palm fronds accumlating on your palm trees. These can become "flaming arrows" in a high wind situation, breaking windows and setting fires in homes miles away.
• Plant iceplant near your home. These accumulate a lot of dead material underneath, which helps to spread fire.
• Plant acacia near your home. This has been used in prior years because it is a fast spreading plant, but it is NOT fire safe. Tesoro del Valle has an abundance of acacia that was planted by the developers.
• Allow plant material to accumulate around your home. Keep planters and other areas clear of dead plant matter.
• Block access to and around your home. Fire equipment will need to have clear access to defend your home.

Creating Defensible Space

Creating defensible space is perhaps the most important thing that you can do to keep your home fire safe. Much of this is common sense, such as not storing flammable materials near your home (including propane tanks and wood piles).

The space closest to your home should contain low groundcover or mown grass. These materials will have a low flame height if burned, and thus will be less likely to be harmful to your home. Occassional well-spaced shrubs are fine, just be sure to have plenty of "breathing room" around the shrubs and remove any dead plant materials from under them.

Trees should be trimmed a minimum of 10 feet from the edge of the foliage to your house. No trees should be actually hanging over your roof.

Boulders, stone paths, paving, and low walls make great decorative fire breaks between natural areas and the start of your property.

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