CASTLE PINES, Colo. — If you’ve been putting off fire mitigation work around your home, South Metro Fire Rescue hopes you take it seriously this year.
Denver7 met with Selena Silva, a wildfire mitigation specialist with SMFR. She said you hear a lot about cleaning up 5 feet out from your home and that's important because it’s closest to your house.
"From your wall to five feet out, we want to keep that lean and clean and green," Silva said.
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That means removing or minimizing things like shrubs, vegetation, especially ground junipers that are very flammable, especially if it's touching your home.
"That's great because it's doable," Silva said. "And there are things and actions that we can to do every single day. We can take those today without a great cost, great expense."
It's also important to get rid of tree branches touching your house or hanging low ,as well as cleaning up leaves and debris below them.
"So as long as we're able to keep that tree in good health, we want to limb up, is the phrase that we use," Silva said. "So that there's no direct contact between the tree and any bottom underlying ladder fuels. Ladder fuels is a critical vocabulary word that we all as Coloradans will know and live by as the years progress."
Silva said research is showing at how effective this can be to protect your home during a fire. Cities like Castle Pines set aside roughly $200,000 a year for wildfire mitigation
Denver7 also met with Marcus Graves, the heads of Castles Pines Parks and Recreation, in an open space that's already undergone mitigation work. Castle Pines Parks and Recreation cleaned up the bottom parts of the trees and did mitigation work around gamble oak to make sure there is space in between them. The idea is to essentially buy firefighters more time.
"Not only do you have to worry about the fire spread," Graves added. "But we also have a storm water system, so we have erosion controls, and so there's many different layers to just going in and clear cutting."
With another high fire danger day Wednesday, Graves said this is what keeps him up at night.
"You live next to open space, and you're doing work and with a welding torch or something like that, flicking a cigarette, a cigar, the small things, chains, clanking on a trailer. These are the things that that keep me up at night when we're doing this. But what helps me and gives me peace is the mitigation that we've done," Graves said.
There are resources online about wildfire mitigation and you can always reach out to your local fire department for help as well.
South Metro Community Risk Reduction - Wildfires
Reverse 911 Sign-up for Arapahoe, Douglas, and Jefferson Counties
SMFR Emergency Preparedness Guide
