Though devastating fires in Los Angeles are mostly under control, the topic of fire safety remains an enormous concern throughout Southern California and especially here in the Morongo Basin. Eric Sherwin, Public Information Officer for San Bernardino County, was recently interviewed by Gary Daigneault for his weekly Z107,7 Up Close Show.
With the entire show focused on fire and how to prevent it, Eric Sherwin was a wealth of information, regarding how to protect your Family and property. The most important place to start is at “zone zero” which is the first five feet from the edge of the structure or home, as the men discuss further:
“So if we’re talking about that ‘Zone Zero’ and that’s that five feet from the edge of your home, the current recommendation or the new recommendation is that there is nothing combustible in those first five feet, so we’re talking about rock or concrete. That’s the best case scenario.
When we talk about trees that exist on our property, we want to limb those up for the first five feet and the whole goal is… we talk about ladder fuels, so we have our dead leaves, pine needles in our mountain communities, and when those are burning, we don’t want that to be able to get up next to a tree and get those lower limbs that get those trees burning again a heavier fuel with a larger energy release component more heat with the ability to radiate or warm or carry that fire into a structure. So we want to keep those trees away from the structure itself. Again to that point we want to make sure nothing is touching our roofs, if you have rain gutters let’s keep those clear, anything to where an ember lands it’s not landing in a fuel bed that can cause a bigger fire and carry that fire into a structure.
Our goal as the fire department is to stop the fires from occurring. When the fires do occur how do we stop homes from burning? This is a best practice and the current science and evidence shows that if we can create that five foot zone zero, we’re putting a homeowner in a position where there’s less of a chance of their home igniting.”
For more information go to the San Bernardino County Fire website at sbcfire.org, where you can also find details on volunteer opportunities as well as the Residential Assessment Program.
You can listen to the entire interview here:
