By Eric Johnson and Chris Neklason
It's a theme we don't mind revisiting and a story we don't tire of telling, and it may be more relevant this year and this month than ever: In the face of a grave threat, the best thing to do is find the others, join forces, and get to work—together. Today, I am talking about the threat of wildfire, because May is Wildfire Awareness Month.
Our featured story this week, Chris's succinct yet comprehensive Explainer about some branded and successful fire-safety efforts, includes a description of the three zones that Fire-Adapted Communities define to fire-harden homes and other structures. There are different strategies for managing the landscape in each zone which, in a wildfire, will protect the structure and firefighters who might have to ultimately save it. Zone 0 is the structure itself and an area of 5 feet around it; Zone 1 is the area from 5 to 30 feet out; Zone 3 extends 100 feet out toward the woods or grassy field or whatever treacherous wildlands surround the place.
There are also, as you will see, three zones of collective effort that produced the technologies and strategies that protect those who live with the threat of wildfire. Closest to the home and homeowner are community organizations including Fire Safe Councils—basically neighbors who work together on everything from brush-clearing weekends to evacuation-route planning. Surrounding and supporting these efforts are guidelines, best-practices, laws and funding to assist in the self-protection of those who live in the Wildland Urban Interface—(WUI, pronounced "woo-ee").
Further out in this metaphoric ring of safety are the publicly funded science and research that produced the standards and codes, and the government programs ranging from education to big-dollar grants for landscape-scoped resilience efforts.
A neighborhood is only resilient when everybody works together—this combination of enlightened self interest and collaboration of community members paired with government funding, resources and assistance is an example of democracy at its best.
