Prepare your home for wildfire
How do homes ignite?
Ember showers tend to be the greatest threat to homes from wildfire. Embers can ignite exterior and interior home components from miles away, as well as vegetation and flammable items near the home. Direct flame contact with the house occurs when flammable items touching the house catch on fire, or when embers start a fire on the structure and create direct contact. Radiant heat exposure occurs from heat radiating off a nearby structure or burning tree and can ignite objects inside the home. By thinking of how homes ignite you can take action to remove the threats that wildfires pose.
By following the information on this page you can reduce the risk of your home igniting.
Use the Home Hazard Assessment Guide to analyze your risks and develop a plan for action.
Use the guides from National Fire Protection Association:
These one page guides give an overview of what to do to prepare your home for wildfire From NFPA.
How to Prepare Your Home For Wildfires
Cómo Preparar su Casa Contra Incendios Forestales
Ten easy tasks to get you started on reducing your wildfire risk from NFPA:
10 Wildfire Risk Reduction Tips
Landscape with fire resistant plants, prepared by New Mexico State University and New Mexico State Forestry
Living with Fire- a Homeowners Guide, a 20 page guide about living with fire from a home preparation scale to community wide planning prepared by New Mexico State Forestry.
Living with Fire - a Homeowners Guide (English)
Viviendo Con Incendios Una guía para los dueños de casas (Spanish)
Video Guides developed by NFPA
NFPA provides action steps for residents to reduce wildfire risks, including seven tips to help keep homes from igniting in a wildfire.
Wildfire Resistant Building Fact Sheets
This series features the wildfire research being done at the Insurance Institute for Business & Home Safety research facility to create more resilient communities. These guides offer in depth information about each topic and what can be done to make your home more fire resistant.
Coatings (PDF)
Decks (PDF)
Fencing (PDF)
Roofing materials (PDF)
Skylights (PDF)
Under-Eave Construction (PDF)
Wildfire Retrofit Guides, also from the Insurance Institute for Business & Home Safety, focuses mainly on structural improvements you can make to protect your home from wildfire. It includes the information from the factsheets above and more.
Protect your Property from Wildfire Guide - Southwest
The Home Ignition Zone Webinar Recording
The video to the right and the link below lead you to materials for a Home Ignition Zone Presentation given in April of 2020. This hour long presentation covers the basics of preparing your home for wildfire.
In this 60 minute webinar Sam Berry of the Forest Stewards Guild and Porfirio Chavarria of the City of Santa Fe Fire Department will show you how to prepare your home for fire season. Research has shown that there are simple and easy actions you can take in the areas closest to your home to drastically lessen the chances of it catching fire in a wildfire. Tune in to learn about the Home Ignition Zones and find out what you can do!