Loading...
HomeMy WebLinkAbout4.03 Firewise Community Assessment ReportFirewise Communities/USA® Community Assessment Template Page 1 Firewise Communities Program® www.firewise.org Firewise Communities / USA Community Assessment Report for Wooden Deer Subdivision Garfield County, Colorado August 2015 Firewise Communities/USA® Community Assessment Template Page 2 Firewise Communities Program® www.firewise.org 1) Introduction The Firewise Communities/USA program is designed to provide an effective management approach for preserving wildland living aesthetics. The program can be tailored for adoption by any community and/or neighborhood association that is committed to ensuring its citizens maximum protection from wildland fire. The following community assessment is intended as a resource to be used by the Wooden Deer Subdivision residents for creating a wildfire safety action plan. The plan developed from the information in this assessment should be implemented in a collaborative manner, and updated and modified as needed. Principal participants who assisted in this assessment are: Carbondale& Rural Fire Protection District • Dean Perkins • Bill Gavette • Jake Spaulding Wooden Deer Subdivision • George Clemens 2) Definition of the Home Ignition Zone The Wooden Deer Subdivision is located in a wildfire environment. Wildfires will happen--exclusion is not a choice. The variables in a fire scenario are when the fire will occur, and where. This assessment addresses the wildfire-related characteristics of the Wooden Deer Subdivision. It examines the area’s exposure to wildfire as it relates to ignition potential. The assessment does not focus on specific homes, but examines the community as a whole. A house burns because of its interrelationship with everything in its surrounding home ignition zone----the house and its immediate surroundings. To avoid a home ignition, a homeowner must eliminate the wildfire’s potential relationship with his/her house. This can be accomplished by interrupting the natural path a fire takes. Changing a fire’s path by clearing a home ignition zone is an easy-to-accomplish task that can result in avoiding home loss. To accomplish this, flammable items such as dead vegetation must be removed from the area immediately around the structure to prevent flames from contacting it. Also, reducing the volume of live vegetation will affect the intensity of the wildfire as it enters the home ignition zone. Included in this assessment are observations made while visiting the Wooden Deer Subdivision. The assessment addresses the ease with which home ignitions can occur under severe wildfire conditions and how these ignitions might be avoided within the home ignition zones of affected residents. The Wooden Deer Subdivision residents can reduce their risk of destruction during a wildfire by taking actions within their home Firewise Communities/USA® Community Assessment Template Page 3 Firewise Communities Program® www.firewise.org ignition zones. This zone principally determines the potential for home ignitions during a wildland fire; it includes a house and its immediate surroundings within 100 to 150 feet. The result of the assessment is that wildfire behavior will be dominated by the residential characteristics of this area. The good news is that by addressing community vulnerabilities, residents will be able to substantially reduce their exposure to loss. Relatively small investments of time and effort will reap great rewards in wildfire safety. 3) DESCRIPTION OF THE SEVERE CASE WILDLAND FIRE CHARACTERISTICS THAT COULD THREATEN THE AREA Fire intensity and spread rate depend on the fuel type and condition (live/dead), the weather conditions prior and during ignition, and the topography. Generally the following relationships hold between the fire behavior and the fuel, weather and topography.  Fine fuels ignite more easily and spread faster with higher intensities than coarser fuels. For a given fuel, the more there is and the more continuous it is, the faster the fire spreads and the higher the intensities. Fine fuels take a shorter time to burn out than coarser fuels.  The weather conditions affect the moisture content of the dead and live vegetative fuels. Dead fine fuel moisture content is highly dependent on the relative humidity and the degree of sun exposure. The lower the relative humidity and the greater the sun exposure, the lower will be the fuel moisture content. Lower fuel moistures produce higher spread rates and fire intensities.  Wind speed significantly influences the rate of fire spread and fire intensity. The higher the wind speed, the greater the spread rate and intensity.  Topography influences fire behavior principally by the steepness of the slope. However, the configuration of the terrain such as narrow draws, saddles and so forth can influence fire spread and intensity. In general, the steeper the slope, the higher the uphill fire spread and intensity. The Wooden Deer Subdivision has the potential for a fire with a high to very high rate of spread. A high rate of spread is characterized by a rate of 12 to 40 chains per hour (13 to 44 feet per minute). A very high rate of spread is characterized by a rate of 40 to 80 chains per hour (44 to 88 feet per minute). The predicted characteristic flame length ranges from 4 to 25 foot flame lengths. The pinion and juniper vegetation which predominates is predicted to produce flame lengths in the very high, 12 to 25 foot range. Fire intensity is expected to be moderate to high with the potential for short and medium range spotting. There is Bureau of Land Management (BLM) property located approximately ¼ mile directly to the west. The BLM land has similar predominately pinion and juniper vegetation. A fire originating on the BLM property has the potential to impact the subdivision from short and medium range spotting. Firewise Communities/USA® Community Assessment Template Page 4 Firewise Communities Program® www.firewise.org 4) SITE DESCRIPTION The Wooden Deer Subdivision was developed in the early 1990s and consists of 22 residential lots with 12 homes currently constructed. It is approximately 102 acres in size, surrounded by private land. There is a 3,100 acre parcel BLM property located approximately ¼ mile directly to the west. The 12 Wooden Deer homes surveyed are primarily on the south facing slope between 10-40%. The vegetation on the southern end of the subdivision which is lowest in elevation consists primarily of native grasses and sagebrush. The central area of the subdivision is primarily pinion and juniper forest. There is another area of sage and grass in the northeastern portion at the top of the subdivision. Firewise Communities/USA® Community Assessment Template Page 5 Firewise Communities Program® www.firewise.org 5) ASSESSMENT PROCESS In 2009 the Missouri Heights Community Wildfire Projection Plan (CWPP) was developed. The Wooden Deer Subdivision was included in the plan and the homes in the subdivision were surveyed during the CWPP process. In 2015 an analysis of the subdivision was conducted using the Colorado Wildfire Risk Assessment Portal. Further site visits were conducted in July 2015. 6) IMPORTANT CONSIDERATIONS The Firewise Communities/USA program seeks to create a sustainable balance that will allow communities to live safely while maintaining environmental harmony in a WUI setting. Homeowners already balance their decisions about fire protection measures against their desire for certain flammable components on their properties. It is important for them to understand the implications of the choices they are making. These choices directly relate to the ignitability of their home ignition zones during a wildfire. 1. Light flashy fuels and shrubs against homes. 2. Continuous fuels directly around homes. 3. Lack of adequate defensible spaces around homes 4. Ladder fuels in trees around homes. Wooden Deer – Continuous fuels around home Firewise Communities/USA® Community Assessment Template Page 6 Firewise Communities Program® www.firewise.org Wooden Deer – Light flashy fuels against home Wooden Deer – Heavy fuels below home Firewise Communities/USA® Community Assessment Template Page 7 Firewise Communities Program® www.firewise.org Wooden Deer – Lack of adequate defensible space 7) OBSERVATIONS AND RECOMMENDATIONS Addressing 1. Provide address markers at each driveway entrance visible from both directions of travel Water Supplies for Fire Protection 1. Create defensible space around well pump house. 2. Consider adding two additional fire hydrants along exiting 4-inch water main. 3. Add an access hatch to the existing upper 10,000 gallons water cistern to provide access for a portable water pump. Defensible Space and Fuel Breaks 1. Remove combustible fuels against and within 5 feet of homes. 2. Remove and thin fuels within a defensible zone from around each structure. 3. Increase crown spacing to a minimum of 10 feet within the defensible space zones. 4. Reduce fuels within 30 feet of driveways. 5. Reduce fuels within 30 feet of roads and consider additional thinning and fuel reduction to create 300 to 340 foot fuel breaks along roads Firewise Communities/USA® Community Assessment Template Page 8 Firewise Communities Program® www.firewise.org Specific Recommendation for Piñion and Juniper Many piñon and juniper (PJ) forests are composed of continuous fuel that is highly flammable. Fire in PJ forests tend to burn intensely in the crowns of trees. Try to create a mosaic pattern when you thin these trees, with a mixture of individual trees and clumps of three to five trees. The size of each clump will depend on the size, health and location of the trees. The minimum spacing between individual trees should be 10 feet between tree crowns, with increasing space for larger trees, clumps, and stands on steeper slopes. Tree pruning for defensible space is not as critical in PJ forests as in pine or fir forests. Instead, it is more important to space the trees so that it is difficult for the fire to move from one tree clump to the next. Trees should only be pruned to remove dead branches or branches that are touching the ground. However, if desired, live branches can be pruned to a height of 3 feet above the ground. Removing shrubs that are growing beneath PJ canopies is recommended to reduce the overall fuel load that is available to a fire. It is NOT recommended to prune live branches or remove PJ trees between April and October, when the piñon ips beetle is active in western Colorado. Any thinning activity that creates the flow of sap in the summer months can attract these beetles to healthy trees on your property. However, it is acceptable to remove dead trees and dead branches during the summer months. If your driveway extends more than 100 feet from your home, thin out trees within a 30 foot buffer along both sides of your driveway, all the way to the main access road. Again, thin all trees to create 10-foot spacing between tree crowns. 8) SUCCESSFUL FIREWISE MODIFICATIONS When adequately prepared, a house can likely withstand a wildfire without the intervention of the fire service. Further, a house and its surrounding community can be both Firewise and compatible with the area’s ecosystem. The Firewise Communities/USA program is designed to enable communities to achieve a high level of protection against WUI fire loss even as a sustainable ecosystem balance is maintained. A homeowner/community must focus attention on the home ignition zone and eliminate the fire’s potential relationship with the house. This can be accomplished by disconnecting the house from high and/or low-intensity fire that could occur around it. The following photographs were taken in Pinion Peaks Subdivision and are examples of good Firewise practices. Firewise Communities/USA® Community Assessment Template Page 9 Firewise Communities Program® www.firewise.org Nearby Pinion Peaks Subdivision – Fuel reduction below home Pinion Peaks Subdivision – Fuel reduction below home Firewise Communities/USA® Community Assessment Template Page 10 Firewise Communities Program® www.firewise.org Pinion Peaks Subdivision – Fuel reduction along driveway Pinion Peaks Subdivision – Fuel reduction along roadway Firewise Communities/USA® Community Assessment Template Page 11 Firewise Communities Program® www.firewise.org Pinion Peaks Subdivision – Fuel reduction around pump house 9) NEXT STEPS – After reviewing the contents of this assessment and its recommendations, the Board of Directors of the Wooden Deer Subdivision, acting as its Firewise Board, in cooperation with the Carbondale & Rural Fire Protection District has determined that it wishes to seek Firewise Communities/USA recognition. The Firewise Communities/USA representative will contact the Firewise Board representative to receive its decision. The Wooden Deer Firewise Board will create agreed-upon, area-specific solutions to the Firewise Communities / USA assessment’s recommendations and will create annually an action plan in cooperation with the Carbondale & Rural Fire Protection District. The Board of Directors of the Wooden Deer Subdivision will review and adopt these action plans annually. The Wooden Deer Subdivision seeks to achieve national Firewise Communities/USA recognition status. To maintain on-going focus on this goal the community will integrate the following standards into its plan of action: • Sponsor a local Firewise board, task force, committee, commission or department that maintains the Firewise Community program and status. • Enlist a WUI specialist to complete an assessment and create a plan from which it identifies agreed-upon, achievable local solutions. Firewise Communities/USA® Community Assessment Template Page 12 Firewise Communities Program® www.firewise.org • Invest a minimum of $2.00 annually per capita in its Firewise Communities/USA program. (Work done by municipal employees or volunteers, using municipal or other equipment, can be included, as can state/federal grants dedicated to that purpose.) • Observe a Firewise Communities/USA Day each spring that is dedicated to a local Firewise project. • Submit an annual report to Firewise Communities/USA. This report documents continuing participation in the program. Wooden Deer Subdivision residents are reminded to be conscious of keeping high- intensity fire more than 100 feet from their homes. It is important for them to avoid fire contact with their structures. This includes firebrands. The assessment team recommends the establishment of a ‘fire free zone’, allowing no fire to burn within ten feet of a house by removing fuels located there. It is a bad idea for fire to touch a house during a wildfire. Remember that, while wildfire cannot be eliminated from a property, it can be reduced in intensity. Homeowners are reminded that street signs, addresses, road widths and fire hydrants do not keep a house from igniting. Proper attention to their home ignition zones does. They should identify the things that will ignite their homes and address those. Weather is, of course, of great concern during wildfire season. At such time as fire weather is severe, homeowners should remember not to leave flammable items outside. This includes rattan doormats, flammable patio furniture, firewood stacked next to the house, or other flammables.