on Mar 6, 2019
The Insurance Institute for Business & Home Safety (IBHS) is conducting a full-scale demonstration live today, March 6. According to a press release shared by IBHS they will cast embers at a fully built structure inside of their test laboratory in Chester County, South Carolina. The test structure is built like a small family home. One side of the structure resembles a home that follows wildfire resistant building and landscaping techniques, while the other side is built ignoring wildfire resistant building techniques.
Because embers or firebrands, small or larger pieces of burning materials that are spread by winds during wildfire events cause most home ignitions, this experiment will allow you to see where ember ignitions can occur in the home ignition zone during wildfire events.
The demonstration will be recorded so that you can view how homes ignite during wildfire events and learn why it is important for residents in wildfire-prone areas to make changes to the home and landscape immediately surrounding the home to reduce their risk of loss during a wildfire event. Check out some of NFPA®’s resources to help you improve your safety before the next wildfire burns where you live.
We need more than firebreaks and vegetation clearance. For wildfire protection, we need a comprehensive external firewall system devoted to protect a community of homes, not just one property, which system may include features like a subterranean heat sink, horizontal heat flue, superior sprinkler system with robotic nozzles, automatic emergency notification, firebrand screens, and more. Our traditional methods are no match for increased winds and heat driven by climate change. A simple 6-ft wall will only serve as a convenient lever for wind-driven wildfires to catapult the flames, heat and firebrands into the interior. Gated communities without comprehensive external firewalls offer little protection against the greatest hazards in hillside communities. Developers and architects should be held to a higher standard in areas with histories of wildfires.
Wildfire safety standards for wildland urban interface (WUI) developments need to be updated. A WUI perimeter external firewall system may hopefully be on the drawing boards by urban planners today, especially when rebuilding our scorched earth neighborhoods from previous seasons. It’s time to invest in our wildfire safety infrastructure. If not now, when are we going to learn?
Hopefully, there are other creative thinkers out there with different ideas to help seal the gaps in our wildfire protection systems and infrastructure. Do we need more wildfire protection scientists? Do we need to retrain our urban planners and hold them accountable to higher standards? Let’s hear from you. Let’s discuss this before the next horrific wildfire displays its calling card with smoke on our horizon. The times, they are a’changing. Don’t let the recent cold snap fool you. The winds, they are a’coming.