A little prevention can go a long ways. While we are still in cooler weather now is the time to take action. If you are a do it yourself type like my wife and I then you can take action now and be prepared for the upcoming fire season. For instance you could:
- Remove dead or unnecessary brush, trees or other plantings.
- Oleanders love to burn, if they are too close to the house or any structure, chop them down. If you don’t dig up the roots, they will be back.
- Manzanita trees fall into the same category as oleanders. At a minimum ladder them up and cut off all dead branches.
- Ladder up all of the trees within proximity to your house. Branches should be high enough that you can walk under them but even higher is better. This helps prevent a ground fire from quickly climbing up a tree.
- If you have a lot of oak trees like we do you might have a lot of dead branches on them. Best to cut these away.
- Rake up fallen dried out leaves. These make great kindling for a spark to start a ground fire.
- And of course dispose of all of these cuttings. Piling them up on your property to decompose will only give a potential fire another place to start.
The goal here is to make your property as Fire Safe as possible. Removal of dry, dead vegetation can go a long way in fire prevention.
