|
Unfortunately California Wildfires are dominating our news cycle once again, so I felt it would be appropriate to discuss ways in which you can help protect your property from wildfire (and potentially, your home insurance policy). If you live here on the Humboldt coast, the more realistic fear might be having your current policy dropped, so a few of these steps could help to ensure that doesn't happen. The two biggest buzzwords you will see/hear are Fire Hardening, and Defensible Space
Home Hardening is the term used to describe vegetation management compliance and building materials used to resist the intrusion of flames or embers projected by a wildfire.
Defensible Space is the buffer zone between a structure and the surrounding area that's designated to slow or stop wildfire. It's created by modifying the vegetation to reduce the threat of wildfire and to help firefighters defend the structure.
In the FireWise figure above, you can see a few different examples of real world steps that you can take to help protect your property and home from future wildfires. Steps One & Two, under the Vegetation Managment section, are the easiest and cheapest actions you can take to help protect your home, and they would also be the first steps you should take if you're worried about losing your insurance policy. Steps three, four and five are just as effective as the first two steps, but they do tend to come with a much heftier price tag. Here in Humboldt, about 95% of our inventory was built decades (sometimes centuries) ago, with little to no thought as to the properties fire safety, so as you can imagine, addressing points three through five requires a much higher price threshold than steps one and two. If you'd like to read more about defensible space and fire hardening, click the links below to read up on all things fire safety!
Fire hardening your home in Humboldt County - https://humboldtgov.org/DocumentCenter/View/79449/CFSC-Hardened-Homes-brochure
Practical ways to protect your property from wildfire, brought to you by Cal-Fire's website - https://www.fire.ca.gov/dspace
| 
