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Fire lines By JOHN DARLING,for the Mail Tribune MailTribune.com By JOHN DARLING,for the Mail Tribune Posted Apr. 9, 2005 at 2:00 AM Updated Feb 16, 2011 at 10:11 AM By JOHN DARLING,for the Mail Tribune Posted Apr. 9, 2005 at 2:00 AM Updated Feb 16, 2011 at 10:11 AM » Social News When Jens Heycke and his family moved into their hilltop home in the Siskiyou Mountain foothills south of Ashland, they saw trouble. Slopes surrounding them were choked with 20-foot-high manzanita, a highly flammable bush that could ladder flames to mature evergreens, then to their house. It was time to change the landscape in a process known as firescaping so the house ' with family inside ' could survive a major wildfire. Heycke hired a crew to help and went at the mass of undergrowth with a chainsaw, eliminating manzanita 100 feet from the house, limbing up pines and firs so lower branches couldn't ignite the main body of the tree. They chipped the wood, covering the ground so brush and grass wouldn't grow back. We thought in terms of creating a defensible space, clearing fuel around the house and roads, with special attention to downhill slopes, where fire climbs up more rapidly, said Heycke, who spent about & 36;10,000 on the project. It was tough work. The example of the devastating Oakland Hills fire in 1991 brought the issue of firescaping to the front burner for many Rogue Valley neighborhoods, especially the more forested ones, like the hills in the south and west parts of Ashland. — But more than a decade later, the effort to improve fire safety for homes near forested areas continues. The city of Ashland is offering a free firescaping class from 10 a.m. to noon today at the city's North Mountain Park. In the class, residents in the boundaries between town and woodlands will learn how to landscape, not just for looks but to make their surroundings a barrier to blazes, said Chris Chambers, wildfire fuels reduction coordinator for the city of Ashland. Fire, he said, moves very quickly, especially in hills and during dry weather ' and in the event of a serious fire at the city's edge, he said, Ashland fire protection is just not adequate. What works, said Chambers, who is teaching today's class, is to reduce not only the amount of fuel 100 feet in each direction around your house, but also the type of plants you have. Plants that contain natural, flammable and fragrant oils (the ubiquitous manzanita tops the list) and produce litter (dead leaves, bark, seeds) burn hottest, aiding the spread of fire. These include juniper, cypress (a popular visual barrier), arborvitae and pampas grass. People learning about firescaping often freak out and cut down mature conifers, creating a moonscape effect that is not only unattractive but causes erosion, said Chambers. The only dangerous thing about conifers is their dense limbs near the ground, along with piles of needles and cones. The solution? Cut the lower limbs so they resemble conifers in wilderness areas, where lightning fires clear out scrub and low branches about once a decade. Also, plant and water grass around your house to create a safe zone. Green grass doesn't burn. If you're building or remodeling, avoid wooden decks that extend out and can provide a handy place for fire to jump to, said Chambers. Stone patios or decks made of synthetic boards are preferable. If you do have flammable species on your land, keep them in groves, with no connectivity of canopies between them and other groves, said landscape architect Kerry KenCairn of Ashland, who co-teaches the firescaping class. Firescaping doesn't mean switching to a non-esthetic yard, she emphasized. In a design sense, you can get as much plant material ' the right kind ' as you want and soften the house into the landscape so it looks as if you're not worried about fire. Thin your plants, don't let pines touch each other at canopy level or touch the house ' and don't plant juniper, especially near your house. You create three zones around the home: the first, nearest the house, where you have fire-resistant plants and keep them well watered; the second, where you clear ground and have few trees and no bushes to ladder fire; and the third, where you thin forest to create groves, said KenCairn. If you're on steep land ' more than 40 percent slope ' the zones extend for 100 feet. If it's a slope of less than 20 percent, a 30-foot defensible zone will do, she added. Firescaping is no longer an option in many parts of Oregon. Oregon's new Forestland-Urban Interface Protection Act starting this year requires homeowners on steep and/or forested land to create defensible spaces around their homes. The work must be complete within two years. Since the law's passage, lands throughout the state have been surveyed, and affected areas have been classified as high risk (oak and grasslands) or extreme risk (conifer and brush), said Brian Ballou, wildland-urban interface specialist with the Oregon Department of Forestry in Central Point. The focus is fuel reduction ' creating a fuel break of 30 feet for high risk and 50 feet for extreme risk, stretching to 100 feet for wood-shake roofs, said Ballou. In Jackson County, some 8,500 property owners this week are being mailed notices of the firescaping work expected of them. Most, he added, are outside city limits, plus some in the steeper areas in Jacksonville and Ashland, and most already pay special taxesfor state fire protection. The fire season for this year, he said, could be pretty nasty judging by the number of fire calls on warm days in March, as well as the scant rainfall. Although the city of Ashland has begun a firescaping outreach and education program, including mailings, Chambers said, It's often difficult without fearmongering to describe how serious things could get. We try to be positive and talk about the esthetics of it ' what flowers to plant and how not to create a moonscape in your yard. But, said Chambers, with a dry year and the right combination of circumstances, a potentially very bad situation could happen in hot, dry hours between damp mornings and cool nights. The city, he said, is committed to protecting homes but can only protect a few of the 1,400 Ashland-area homes in the wildland-urban interface zone. The Oregon Department of Forestry has fire trucks ready on Tolman Creek Road all summer, as well as fire-retardant bombers. The Ashland watershed above town is being vigorously thinned for the first time in more than a century and the city has posted Wildfire Evacuation Route signs in above-boulevard neighborhoods. This has many homeowners thinking ' will the worst eventually happen? I think the truth is that something's going to happen someday, said Chambers. You see it in fires like Biscuit and the L.A. fire of '03 — and Berkeley-Oakland in '91. You can't keep fire out forever ' and what you do before the fire determines what's going to happen and what homes will burn. By JOHN DARLING,for the Mail Tribune MailTribune.com By JOHN DARLING,for the Mail Tribune Posted Apr. 9, 2005 at 2:00 AM Updated Feb 16, 2011 at 10:11 AM » STAY INFORMED Email NewsLetter Sign Up Today Sign up for our newsletter and have the top headlines from your community delivered right to your inbox. Southern Oregon Directory Featured Businesses Loading... 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