SHFSC Homeowner Brochure

“As stewards of the land which will be our legacy, we must come to terms with fire as an elemental force which can cause destruction on a devastating scale or help us to create landscapes that are healthy, fire tolerant and rich with economic and biological niches.”

Living With Fire
A guide for the homeowner

Firescape
Landscaping to reduce fire hazard

Homeowners Checklist
How to make your home fire safe

Sheltering in Place and Getting Out Alive
Both of these brochures were put out by the Rancho Santa Fe Fire Protection District in San Diego.

Structural Fire Prevention Field Guide
The purpose of this new Structural Fire Prevention Field Guide is to facilitate implementation of state ordinances within the Urban-Wildland Interface in order to make structures safer. This Guide is intended for wide distribution to agency staff, to help homeowners, landowners, decision-makers, and local government planners learn more about factors important to land use decisions.

Preparing a Community Wildfire Protection Plan
A Handbook for Wildland–Urban Interface Communities

Upper Mattole Fire Plan
The Upper Mattole Fire Plan identifies current fire concerns in the upper Mattole watershed of Humboldt and Mendocino counties, California. A series of neighborhood meetings was held in the Ettersburg, Thorn Junction, Whitethorn, and Whale Gulch communities between December 2003 and March 2004. At these meetings, issues of fire safety were discussed and plans for action identified. Out of this process, projects were prioritized to address fire safety. These projects generally fall in the category of fuel hazard reduction, water storage, and ongoing community fire safety education.

Lower Mattole Fire Plan
The Lower Mattole Fire Plan documents current concerns surrounding issues of fire in the Lower Mattole watershed of Humboldt County, California. Through a process of community and neighborhood meetings around the Petrolia and Honeydew areas in January, February, and March 2002, issues of fire safety were discussed and plans for action identified. Out of this process, issues were prioritized to address fire safety and fuel hazard reduction.

Fire Planning and Mapping Tools
The Fire Planning and Mapping Tools Viewer is a user friendly web site in which a person can create a map of an area, print, and download data to the User's personal computer to use with Geographic Information Systems (GIS) software.

Basic Principles of Forest Fuel Reduction Treatments
James K. Agee, Carl N. Skinner
Successful fire exclusion in the 20th century has created severe fire problems across the West. Not every forest is at risk of uncharacteristically severe wildfire, but drier forests are in need of active management to mitigate fire hazard. We summarize a set of simple principles important to address in fuel reduction treatments: reduction of surface fuels, increasing the height to live crown, decreasing crown density, and retaining large trees of fire-resistant species. Thinning and prescribed fire can be useful tools to achieve these objectives...
Applying treatments at an appropriate landscape scale will be critical to the success of fuel reduction treatments in reducing wildfire losses in Western forests.

Alternative Strategies for Design, Layout and Administration of Fuel Removal Projects
This report develops analysis components for effective fire risk reduction strategies to help professionals, publics, and policy-makers gain a better understanding of the current circumstances and alternatives.

Prefire Effectiveness
This paper explores the current state-of-knowledge regarding the role of prefire programs in helping the California Department of Fire and Forestry implement its mandate of protecting and enhancing forest, range, and brushland resources.
Prefire management is any treatment put in place prior to a fire that reduces risk, hazard, or exposure of a value to loss. The expected result of prefire programs is a reduction in costs and damages associated with wildland fires.

Out of the Flames:
Point Reyes Ten Years After the VisionFire
Ten years ago, in October 1995, an epic wildfire scorched 12,000 acres of the park and consumed 45 homes on nearby Inverness Ridge...
The perspective of a decade brings new understanding. The Vision Fire burned in a region that is wild but not remote, affording scientists an unprecedented opportunity to study the complexities of the landscape’s response to a massive burn. Different habitats and plant communities respond to flame in different ways, but today all the former burn zones look lush and healthy, a testament to fire’s ancient regime of creation, destruction, and transformation.

Fire Regimes, Fire History and Forest
Conditions in the Klamath-Siskiyou Region:
An Overview and Synthesis of Knowledge
This report compiles and synthesizes currently available information relating to the historic and contemporary role of fire in forest ecosystems of the Klamath Mountains. The primary objectives in conducting this synthesis are to: 1) provide the scientific foundation for developing ecologically-based fire and forest management plans, 2) evaluate the extent to which fire regimes in the region have been altered as a result of human activities since Euro-American settlement, and 3) identify existing levels of uncertainty and limits to our understanding of the ecological role of fire in this region.

Introduction to Holistic Restoration Forestry: Forested Landscapes of Southwestern Oregon and Northern California
Dennis Martinez