Community Wildfire Protection Implementation Plan, CWPIP
ICFPD supports all residents who participate in wildfire mitigation and home hardening.
You probably all know what wildfire mitigation means. It is removing fuels that would lead to an uncontrollable wildfire. It does not mean clear cutting your property or replacing all your flowers with rocks. It is a science-based approach that can lessen the ability of a wildfire to devastate an entire landscape.
We have been suppressing all wildfires for over 100 years. Wildfire is a natural part of the ecosystem that we live in. Since we have been suppressing fires, our forests have become overgrown, unhealthy and extremely dangerous during a wildfire. Mitigation helps us restore the natural balance of the forest ecosystem, encourages the wildlife population, protects our drinking water supply and most importantly, keeps us all safer.
Home hardening is a process of making your home less susceptible to the impacts of fire. Typically, your home will not be burned by a fire front moving through. It is the embers that land on your roof, deck and other places that start little fires in dead pine needles, dead leaves, lawn furniture or even a straw broom left outside, that ignites your house. Home hardening is recognizing the areas of potential home ignition and defines how to mitigate that.
For a great video showing the effects of wildfire embers on a structure, click here.
For a great video showing the success stories of mitigation and home hardening, click here.
A CWPIP is a document that helps a community work together to define specific areas that can be hazards to access and egress during a fire. It also will help define the appropriate mitigation and home hardening standards to implement to make an entire community less susceptible to wildfire. The CWPIP then helps the community prioritize these items into a work plan with achievable goals that benefit the individuals as well as the community.
If you would like more information about how to start the process of developing a CWPIP for your community. Please contact our Wildland Captain:
John Mandl
303-697-4413