Get Back To The Basics Of Fire Safety

(Other than the daily and monthly maintenances of caring for your home's appearance and function, other precautions must be taken to preserve your home.)

Perhaps the one thing that can strike without much warning and destroy your home and everything in it within minutes, a fire is usually something you can avoid.

It may seem like you're going back to grade school but every home owner should have an understanding of fire safety and prevention. The article, "Keep Your Home Fire-Safe," written by Phoebe Chongchua from Realty Times, November 6, 2006, offers a few fire safety points that should be reviewed every few months.

Many areas of the country, especially California, are prone to sweeping winds in dry valleys where a single spark can ignite into a blazing forest fire, claiming homes and lives.

"It's a scary thought to consider that a fire can level your home in seconds. The best prevention is to know your environment, the risks of the area, and then prepare for the worst."

While home developers are licensed and trained to construct homes using fire preventing techniques and materials, individual home owners who decide to build their own dream home are prone to falling into fire-igniting pitfalls.

"It's about a larger trend that is happening across the nation where there is increasing development into these wild land areas without necessarily the recognition that the natural environment has certain things like wildfire that may affect homes," explains Christopher Blaylock, Project Manager for Wildfire Education at San Diego Natural History Museum.

There are a few concentrated areas to focus on when attempting to fire-proof or fire-safe your home.

The first thing to do is use fire-safe, non-combustible materials on all housing projects such as fixing the roof, building a deck and the overall construction of the house.

"Look for materials such as brick, stucco, or Class A roofing that won't easily ignite and choose these over others."

Reduce ember penetration. Alright, this may seem like a lot more work than it is, but it is a very important prevention technique. Houses often catch fire because the wind drags a hot ember(s) across the landscape, under your house.

"Homes in San Diego have burned because embers blew, maybe from a mile away, and then lodged into crevices of the home and ignited the house."

To best prevent loose ember from igniting under your house, seal up any areas or cracks where embers could enter under your property and remove all leaf piles and other flammable substances from the perimeter of your house.

Along these same lines, the next fire prevention technique is to create a defensible and survivable space.

"For example, if you have very dense, dry brush around your home that can become contiguous fuel should a fire occur -- the brittle brush can become a path for the fire to follow and burn."

Even if you cannot remove all the brush or flammable materials, create spaces or breaks in the material so it cannot combine to form a major fire swell and engulf a particular area.

And the last prevention tip is maintenance. Again, trees and branches are not usually the fire hazards, but rather the loose leaves created from them.

"If that particular tree, for whatever reason, has been neglected -- it isn't watered, so it's dry and it has very dry leaves -- maintenance is one of the biggest things homeowners can do [to prevent the loss of their home to fire],' says Blaylock."

Most of fire prevention is common sense but the actual prevention part comes down to motivation. Many fires are caused because someone put off raking the leaves or cutting down excessive branches.

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