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Fire-resistant Plants for Home Landscapes: Selecting plants that may reduce your risk from wildfire

Year of Publication
2006
Publication Type

In the Pacific Northwest, fires are a natural part of the changing landscape. As homeowners continue to build in the wildland-urban interface, they must take special precautions to protect their lives, homes, and property.One way to do this is to create a defensible space around your home. This is the area between your home or other structures, where potential fuel (materials or vegetation) have been modified, reduced, or cleared to create a barrier and slow the spread of wildfire toward your home. A defensible space also allows room for firefighters to fight the fire safely.Three critical steps in creating a defensible space include using fire-resistant building materials (for example, roofing materials), reducing wildland fuels around the home, and using fire-resistant plant material in the landscape. These actions DO NOT ensure that your home will survive a wildfire, but they substantially increase the chances.

Authors
Joint Fire Science Program
Citation

Fire-resistant Plants for Home Landscapes: Selecting plants that may reduce your risk from wildfire. Pacific Northwest Extension; 2006 p. 48. Available from: http://ir.library.oregonstate.edu/xmlui/bitstream/handle/1957/20921/%2a…