Your Yard Can Protect Your House From Wildfire | SERVPRO® of Gwinnett County South

7/27/2021 (Permalink)

If your home is damaged by fire or any other reason, SERVPRO of Gwinnett County South is ready and able to repair any damage.

Wildfire is a homeowner’s fever dream—the helplessness of watching your home go up against a raging fire. Thankfully you live in Georgia, where that kind of stuff doesn’t happen, right?

Actually, property damage caused by wildfire is a more common occurrence than you may realize. Wildfires happen all over—and with their rate of acceleration and the abundance of fuel for them to devour, it’s a wonder we are ever able to stop them at all.

But we are not totally helpless; there are a few things we can do, other than simply being more careful, to stop the spread of wildfires.

Today we’re learning about “defensible space.”

What Is Defensible Space?

See, NASA has these missiles—no, wait, that’s not it; let’s try again. “Defensible space” is a buffer area with which you can surround your home.

By removing potential fuel like dead trees and leaves, adding hardscape and gravel to the immediate areas around your home, and using purposeful planting and pruning practices, you can decrease the odds that your home will be swallowed up.

Think of defensible space as a protective barrier (aka defense), designed to choke out a fire’s fuel sources as it comes near to your home. Additionally, it gives firefighters their best chance of stopping a wildfire before it breaks through your home’s perimeter.

Defensible space is not required by law in Georgia, but it’s a good fire safety practice to consider all the same.

Why Defensible Space Matters

You may think of wildfires as a California problem, but they can and do happen everywhere in the United States. There were over 59,000 wildfires across the United States in 2020.

Even if you remove California’s astounding 10,000+ fires from that number, the average number of wildfires per state in 2020 was still almost 1,000. And it’s not over—the first six months of 2021 have seen a 25% increase in wildfire occurrence over last year.

Here in Georgia we suffered 1,699 wildfires in 2020, losing nearly 5,700 acres of land to the blazes.

We should take advantage of anything that makes wildfires less likely to impact our homes. Defensible space is just one more way we can protect our property.

If your home is damaged by fire of any sort, wild or not, SERVPRO is ready and able to repair the damage caused. Get in touch today to get the pros on your team.