Defensible Space

The other day I was browsing through the many photos that I have on my hard drive. I ran across several photos that suggested this blog post. It may not be of interest to most of you, but I am sure that it will interest one of my regular readers, Eric, a retired fire chief.

In the early 1990’s Evelyn and I purchased a five-acre plot in the mountains of southern Oregon: 5,000 feet elevation, 23 miles from the nearest grocery store or gasoline station, and 10 miles from the nearest mail delivery. We designed and built an 8,500 square-foot home. The home had a very large south-facing deck overlooking many pine and fir trees, Howard Prairie Lake, and the top of Mount Shasta.

It turned out that this property was in a “Fire Protection Class 10” area. That is, the only outfit who might respond to a fire was the forest service, and their job was to protect the forest and not structures. Only one outfit offered homeowners insurance.

There is not much an individual can do in the event of a forest fire. (We did have sprinklers on the roof, 1,700 gallons of water storage, and a diesel generator to run the pumps.) So the real leverage involved the creation and maintenance of a “defensible space” surrounding the structures. That is, removing all of the ground and ladder fuel for at least 100 feet (300 feet is better).

So, in the spring, after the snow had melted, I gathered all of the dead branches that had fallen to the ground and stacked them in clearings between the trees. (I think that “among” is more grammatically correct than “between”, but it just does not sound right.) Then, pole saw in hand, sometimes augmented with an extension ladder, I walked around under the trees and cut off all of the dead or broken branches, as well as any limbs that brushed my head as I walked by.

Then I covered each pile with black plastic, weighing down each corner of the plastic with rocks. After the first snow fall it was a simple matter of wiping the snow off a small area of the plastic, tearing a small hole in the plastic, and pouring a small amount of a mixture of gasoline and diesel oil into the brush pile. Dropping a match into the hole started the process of burning most of the brush. Usually there was left a few smoldering pieces around the periphery, which, upon raking them into the center, completed the burning process. (Now that is an awkward sentence that I do not intend to rewrite.)

And people ask me what kept me busy during the summers other than cutting, splitting, and stacking fire wood for the winter months.

And you, who teases me about my Ticonderoga #2, yes, I did draft this with a #2 pencil. Not a Ticonderoga, though.