The Fires They Are A-Changin'

WIldfire prepared?

Come gather 'round people

Wherever you roam

And admit that the fires

Around you have grown

And accept it that soon

you could be without a home

If your house to you is worth savin'

Then you better start mitigatin''

Or you'll sink like a stone

For the times they are a-changin'

Apologies to Bob Dylan, but I couldn't resist...

Only 20 minutes from San Francisco, sits Mill Valley, where we live right in the middle of the WUI (Wildland Urban Interface) Our property and other neighbors back up to the HVLT (Homestead Valley Land Trust), a local nature preserve in the Marin coastal range with steep hills covered with thousands of Redwoods, Coastal Oak and shrub Chaparral. Directly adjacent is the GGNRA (Golden Gate National Recreation Area) an 82,000 acre federal park and wildland stretching from just outside the Golden Gate Bridge through west Marin, twenty miles north to Tomales Bay. It is a breathtaking place to live but we are in the hot zone for wildfire! After the disastrous LA fires, many of our neighbors are feeling overwhelmed by the risk and wondering what, if anything, we can do to prepare.

We're in the same boat.

Our house is old, ninety years, with cedar shake shingles and a redwood deck. A mature Cherry and a Coastal Oak overhanging the roof. Like many of our neighbors, we moved here because we love trees and the mountain village feeling of Mill Valley, and especially the unique and quirky old homes and winding narrow streets that characterize Homestead, where we live. Some of the redwoods around our house show burn scars 10-15' up the trunks from the 1929 fire that destroyed hundreds of homes almost a century ago.

Work to do

Wildfire has always been here, but things have changed. Fire season is a month longer now, fires are more explosive, harder to contain and orders of magnitude more destructive than ever. Insurers are dropping policies and some have even left the state entirely. Something has to change and it is FINALLY starting to happen. California will begin enforcing home hardening and defensible space measures this year. More stringent regulations around individual homeowner responsibility will soon be the norm in Marin and across the state.

This has left many homeowners feeling overwhelmed by the required changes and by the worry that they could lose their homeowner's insurance and ultimately their homes in a neighborhood conflagration. It is scary and unpredictable but take heart, there are pretty straightforward and relativley economical measures that can be taken to protect your home and family and we'll be profiling them over the next weeks and months.