 surrounded by nature and wildlands can be peaceful and beautiful, but it can also be risky. All over the country, people are rapidly moving into formerly unpopulated areas. From previously underdeveloped Native American reservations to rapidly growing small towns and suburbs of larger cities, new homes are being built where they were just trees before. The risk of violent high-intensity wildfires is rising in many woodland areas and not just in the deep woods. Hi, I'm Ron Hazleton. In this suburban New Jersey development, an 800-acre forest fire recently threatened dozens of homes right in this interface area. Now the good news for people living in wildland settings is that there are several things you can do to protect your home before a wildfire ever gets started. In this program, I'll show you how wildfires can threaten homes in wildlands anywhere, whether you're retrofitting an existing house or building one from scratch, a professional builder, or a do-it-yourselfer. You will learn techniques of firewise construction that can make your home less vulnerable should a wildfire strike. Wildfires present a major threat to homes in the wildland urban interface. This is the area where wildland and residential areas meet and where they can be most affected by each other. In 1991, a devastating fire in Oakland, California destroyed over 3,000 dwellings in a matter of hours. But wildfires occur in more places than California. Although high temperatures, low humidity, and low rainfall increase the likelihood of a fire, wildfires can happen anywhere in the country at any time. They are unpredictable, and no region is immune from them. Nearly every year, a major wildfire is reported by the media. Major wildfires blaze across the country, putting entire towns and hundreds of woodland homes at risk. Generally, wildfires don't make national news. Instead of hundreds of homes, most fires threaten only 10 or 12. If a wildfire occurs near you, it may spread rapidly and become a serious problem. In short, if you're living or building on the edge of a wildland area, you need to prepare for the risk of wildfire. To better understand how to protect your home, it's important to know how fire behaves. Fire needs fuel and oxygen. To a wildfire, homes and other structures are a form of fuel, and the wind provides plenty of oxygen. The slope of the terrain is also important to a wildfire's rapid spread. Generally, a fire moving up a slope moves faster and has longer flames than one on level ground, because hot gases rise in front of it preheating its path. Let me use these burning matches to illustrate the point. As long as I hold these level, the flame remains fairly constant and doesn't spread very rapidly. But if I tip these up, creating a slope, then the flame gets larger and the fire burns hotter. And this is the way a wildfire spreads. The flames actually heat up and dry out the fuel ahead, causing the fire to spread rapidly. When a wildland fire is approaching a home, it can be a threat in two different ways. The first, and more common way, is an indirect threat. When the fire front is still more than a mile away, burning embers or firebrands can be carried by the wind. They land on roofs or collect in low points around a house, such as underdeckings in an adjacent landscape vegetation. These embers can also be drawn into an attic if there are open eaves or through open, unscreened windows and vents. The amount of damage to an unprepared home can be devastating. Secondly, when a fire is close enough, the heat and the flames directly threaten the home, causing combustible materials like decks, siding, fences, and roofs to ignite. It will also melt plastics and break plate glass windows. Preparing for these types of threats through fire-wise construction can make the difference in the amount of damage sustained in a wildfire in the future. When a wildfire occurs, the demand on the local fire department is intense. Protecting people's lives is their first priority. Protecting property and resources is secondary. With both wildland vegetation and a large number of structures threatened, the fire department's normally adequate resources can become overwhelmed. Often, they may have to decide between attacking the fire or choosing which structure can be saved. You can help improve the firefighting effort by making your property a place to effectively battle the blades and make it more likely your structure can be saved. If your access road is too narrow, poorly maintained, or inadequately marked, fire apparatus may not be able to do any good. The goal of fire-wise construction is this. Your home and surrounding structure should be able to survive independently of the efforts of the fire services. Homeowners in those building near wildland areas have the responsibility and the power to protect their property. However, these are things that have to be thought about in advance. Once a wildfire has started, it's simply too late. Here's an example. During a major wildfire in Laguna Beach, California, hundreds of homes were destroyed in a short period of time. A few homes survived, but notably, one house came through it all with very little damage. Some called it a miracle house, but it wasn't really a miracle. This house had been built with fire-wise construction in mind, using the right materials and the right design. In Frogtown, Virginia, a home survived a 400-acre fire because of the way it was constructed. Among its features, fire-resistant roof materials, a stone foundation, and an elevated deck designed to prevent the accumulation of combustible materials beneath it. This allowed firefighters to stay and battle the blades that was very near to the home. A home's chances of survival can be greatly improved through careful planning, design, and landscaping. Simple, cost-effective and attractive fire-wise alternatives should be considered as you build or retrofit a home. And choosing fire-wise construction does not mean you have to eliminate your aesthetic ideals. What this does mean is selecting appropriate materials and detailing to minimize the fire hazard, or it may mean choosing a different material than originally planned, one that's less combustible. It can be as easy as watching where the leaves collect in your yard, showing you where embers or firebrands may land, and then clearing those areas of all dead vegetation or other materials that may burn. Coming up, we'll show you how a home project can be planned so that practically any house can survive a wildfire. If you're a construction professional, architect, developer, contractor, working in the wildland-urban interface area, becoming a fire-wise builder can mean adding an important set of skills to your trade. It allows you to offer real benefits to your clients, benefits that could mean the difference between a home surviving or succumbing in a wildfire. It can be as simple as making some knowledgeable decisions about the site, the materials, and the design, and striking the proper balance between fire resistance and other factors important to your client, like cost and appearance. When building homes in interface areas, consider these simple steps for wildfire protection. First, choose a fire-wise location. Then, design and build a fire-wise structure. Check your plans for some fire protection basics. Here are several location issues to keep in mind. Is the home being built on the most level portion of the land? Fire spreads rapidly even on minor slopes. Don't locate in chimneys and saddles or other topographical areas which would channel the flow of wind. If you're building on top of a ridge, make sure the structure is set back at least 30 feet from the edge for a single-story home and more for one that is higher. Otherwise, the house can be hit directly by flames and heat moving up the sides of the ridge. To give firefighters a chance to fight the blaze on the site, make certain the driveway is well marked and wide enough for fire apparatus to have easy access. 12 feet wide with a vertical clearance of 15 feet and a slope of less than 12 percent. Provide a large turnaround at the house and consider access to a water supply wherever possible. Now let's turn to the structure itself. You know it is possible to design attractive homes for these areas. I'm not talking about concrete boxes with no windows. By carefully considering and recommending materials that are less combustible and by offering the right combination of detailing, it's possible to create a home that's not only aesthetically pleasing, but fire-wise. Now let's take a look at some of the specific areas you'll want to pay attention to while building these houses. A major cause of home loss in the wildland area is due to the flammability of roofing materials. Roofs can catch fire easily when wind-blown sparks land on them or from direct contact with flames from nearby trees, shrubs, or neighboring structures. Once a combustible roof ignites, fire usually moves quickly to the rest of the structure. You can't always depend on exterior roof sprinklers to protect a combustible roof from burning. Not only is water pressure at its lowest during a fire, but the electricity needed to pump the water often fails. The high winds associated with the event also divert the spray from the roof. Roof materials are rated for their fire resistance. Look for Class A or non-combustible exterior materials for the roof system. Fire-resistant materials such as slate and clay tile offer superior fire protection. However, they are heavy, requiring stronger roof framing and also increase the seismic design and resistance requirements. A structural evaluation should be made if an existing structure is re-roofed with these heavier materials. Metal panels made from galvanized steel can provide a non-combustible surface. Fire-rated construction is dependent upon the substrate assembly. Today, there are even fire-resistant products that simulate the look of wood shakes. And some localities allow the use of pressure-treated fire-resistant wood shakes. Like the roof, exterior walls should be clad with fire-resistant materials if possible. During a major wildfire, a structure's materials and design should prevent or highly retard penetration of any burning embers into the interior walls, soffits, attic area, and rooms. Exterior walls clad with flammable materials have a greater danger than non-flammable clad walls of igniting from burning landscape plants in contact with or near the wall. The edges of flammable wall materials will ignite before flat surfaces. Therefore, trim materials on casings and facings are typically the first to catch on fire. As the wall materials start to burn, the wall acts as a bridge to the eaves and soffit areas, overhangs, and windows. Some exterior siding materials, such as vinyl, soften and melt, losing product stability. This potentially exposes internal wall components to heat and embers and can allow the fire away into the home. Other materials which perform better under heat and exposure include cement plaster or conventional stucco, fiber cement, and concrete masonry products such as stone, bricks or blocks, and heavy timber construction as in log homes. However, these types of fire-resistant materials are heavier and increase the weight of the structure, so foundation support and earthquake resistant requirements may also need to be considered. Like the roof surface, metal panels and siding can provide a non-combustible finished surface. The size and materials of the windows can be one of the most important design elements in a home's construction. In a wildfire, window glass can fracture and collapse when exposed to rapid changes in temperature or bombardment by windblown projectiles. This can occur much more quickly than the structure itself is affected. Once the windows are broken, flames and burning embers can enter directly into the interior of a structure. Of course, a window is only as good as the glass it's made of, and the size of a pane has a lot to do with it. Smaller individual panes such as this 2x2 work best. This is because the probability of collapse increases relative to the size of the exposed piece of glass. Large plate glass windows have less resistance and can collapse due to fractures or loss of frame integrity. Double pane windows with the airspace in between the two pieces of glass, like you see right here, fare somewhat better than single panes, and smaller panes hold up better in their frames than do larger ones. But tempered safety glass is the wiser choice. It outperforms plate glass and is especially useful in larger applications like picture windows. In fact, sliding glass doors must be made of tempered glass. Recommend functional nonflammable shutters as an ornamental alternative to tempered glass. These shutters should be constructed so burning embers cannot collect inside the window casing. Plastic skylights can melt from firebrands and heat exposure. Of course, everyone in the house needs a way outside in the event of fire. Every home should have at least two ground level doors as safety exits, and each room two means of escape, one of which can be a window. In the wildland urban interface, severe fires normally produce heavy firebrand showers. Homes are particularly vulnerable when these sparks or embers pass through and collect in such openings as vents, eaves, soffits, and louvers. Vents are necessary to allow for proper condensation control for plastics and under floors. It is important that these vents are properly screened to prevent burning embers from entering and that all other roof-choiced openings are fire blocked. Vents should be constructed so that the opening is screened to prevent the passage of anything larger than 1 eighth of an inch. Both vents and screening should be made of materials that will not burn or melt and therefore won't allow firebrands passage into the interior. Therefore, plastic and nylon screening are not recommended. Soffit vents should be designed closer to the roof line than the wall to prevent entrapment of heat or flames. Eventual warping of wood blocks between rafter ends could allow brand entry into the structure. For the same reason, the eaves themselves should be boxed or designed just large enough to prevent weather damage. In closing an eave or making it a soffit using fire-resistant materials reduces the surface area and openings available to a fire. This will slow a fire's entrance into the attic and subfloor areas adjacent to the eaves and overhangs. Outbuildings and features like decks, porches, and fences which are attached to the residents should be treated as part of the structure and receive just as much attention as the house itself. Now this is another area where you as the builder can have some influence. For example, a flammable wood fence attached to a home greatly increases its ignition potential. Fences can act like fuses or fuel bridges leading a fire right to a house. Build fences with less flammable materials and either don't attach them to the home or add a stone or concrete pillar at the end. A trellis is a risk if it is either made of a flammable material or covered with vegetation which could catch fire. Try a non-flammable metal trellis. A patio deck should be designed to prevent the accumulation of combustible materials and vegetative debris beneath it. Screen or box in decks, porches, or any other areas below the ground line whenever possible to keep out sparks and flames. And be aware of the hazard of an elevated deck located at the top of a hill. It could be in the direct line of a fire moving up the slope. Consider terraces in lieu of elevated decks. These simple steps increase a home's fire resistance and therefore reduce the risk of a wildfire gaining an easy access to the structure. When recommending landscaping ideas to your client keep this fire-wise goal in mind. Minimize the amount of materials that a fire can consider fuel from around a home for a distance of no less than 30 feet. The simple truth is this. Every home in a wildland setting is at some risk from wildfire. As a designer, developer, or builder working with structures in these areas you have an opportunity to offer your client a home that's designed and constructed with these fire-wise features. By knowing about and using the most fire resistant materials that are feasible on the project, designing the structure and surrounding area to prevent fire from easily gaining access and recommending sensible upkeep and maintenance. You, the fire-wise builder, gain a professional edge. And the home you build has a better chance of surviving a wildfire.