If You Choose to Stay. . .Stay Responsibly

Having decided to stay, whether you think your place is not threatened or because you intend to participate in the defense of your home, you need to think further about the following. Remember, a wildfire is a violent, complex phenomenon. It can change direction and speed in moments. The winds can blow embers for a mile or more from the main fire-front, leaping considerable distances and over obstacles. What may seem safe at one time may be threatened minutes later.

A wildfire close-up is dangerous and stressful even on observers. The heat, smoke and noise will saturate your senses and do some harm almost no matter what you do. Firefighters typically find that they have suffered "minor" burns in spite of, and sometimes right through their protective clothing. Their eyes, throats and lungs will be irritated and sore, sometimes taking days to return to "normal." Some residual damage may be permanent.

Do not subject anyone to this against their will. Do not permit anyone to subject themselves to this if they already have significant heart problems or a compromised respiratory system. Goggles or masks may protect eyes and lungs, but stress can get to a weakened heart despite any gear.

Study and train
To stay with the intent to protect your home from a wildfire puts you in the same boat as the professional firefighters. You are taking on their jobs and risks with almost none of their advantages of training, knowledge and teamwork. Reading this booklet is not going to make up for these disadvantages. It will only point out what you need to know.

We can, however, point you in the direction of useful knowledge and materials you can read--study would be better--on your own:

o First, all the material on which this booklet is based is available to anyone who wants to see it by contacting T-CEP at P.O. Box 1708, Topanga, CA 90290. There are books on firefighting available in the T-CEP library and in the public library. Do the research.

o Second, T-CEP sponsors Red Cross First Aid and CPR courses which should be part of your background.

o Third, T-CEP maintains a communication system activated in an emergency designed to gather and disseminate information from/to residents and official agencies. We would like to have a "correspondent" in every neighborhood, who could keep us informed about what the situation of the neighborhood is, and to whom we could pass information. The telephone is part of this system, but telephone poles burn down and cell phones also go down or become overloaded. That's why we want to encourage people to use radios. We prefer amateur radios that need licenses, but we can work with any kind of radio that will reach our Emergency Operations Center from your neighborhood. Radio is reliable because we control it and batteries are cheap.

o Fourth, Station 69 is training a group of call firefighters to crew a second engine. These volunteer firefighters are taking the full Los Angeles County Fire Department course and have to pass their physical tests. We would like to work with Station 69 to make some of these courses accessible to others. We think that if there were some volunteers who wanted to learn more, but who might not qualify as call firefighters, we can arrange classes. Contact T-CEP.

o Fifth, volunteer for any one or more of the community groups concerned with aspects of the fire danger. These include T-CEP teams, Arson Watch, the Firesafe Committee, and any of the community watch groups. There is safety as well as strength in joint action against a common danger. The danger in Urban Interface areas such as Topanga is dynamic, and so must your preparations be.

Equipment necessities
Emphasis is on "necessities." These fall into two main categories--personal protective equipment (PPE) and firefighting equipment. Both categories contain many choices at many price levels. The approach adopted here might be called the reasonable minimum. That is, the levels of equipment suggested are what would be expected to be effective, barring gross errors in judgment or unforeseeable circumstances, at a cost an average resident of Topanga could afford.

Note also that the suggestions in the following sections are very brief. T-CEP maintains a set of catalogs available for browsing and comparison. Call the Hot Line to arrange availability.

Personal Protective Equipment
Starting with clothing, the absolute minimum is all-natural fiber clothes, starting with socks and underwear and going to long pants and a long-sleeved shirt that closes around the neck. Cotton and wool do not support combustion well--they will not flash into flame nor will flame spread rapidly from one part to another. Artificial fibers, even if they will not support combustion, will melt, making them stick to flesh and multiplying the effects of burning. They are more difficult to rip off someone whose clothing may be burning.

It is important that clothing act as a thermal insulator also, as the heat radiated by the fire could itself cause burns or make metal fittings so hot that they would cause burns. So don't carry metal, coins or tools in pockets but in external pouches.

You might think that in hot weather it would be better to wear shorts and short-sleeved shirts, but it is far more important to keep as much of the radiant heat of the fire away from your body as you can. This is a case not only of burn protection but also of minimizing water loss and dehydration--think of desert Arabs and their long robes and turbans.

Pictures of injuries suffered by firefighters trapped in the 1996 Calabasas fire dramatically show the advantage of dressing in layers with a long-sleeved cotton t-shirt under the Nomex brush jacket. One firefighter wearing a short-sleeved t-shirt suffered second- and third-degree burns from the glove-line up his arm to the hem of the t-shirt sleeve. From the hem of the shirt upward he had only lighter first- and second-degree burns--no picnic, but far preferable.

Shoes should be all leather, with no plastic or mesh to melt or let in hot air or sparks. The last thing you want is to have burned feet. Being unable to walk can leave you dangerously exposed and difficult to rescue. The shoes should be high cut, preferably boots six inches or more in height, in case you need to move across a recently-burned patch of ground. To firefighters a burned-over patch represents safety, but you'd better have footwear that can take it.

Add cotton neckerchiefs to protect your neck, nose and mouth, and a hat with a brim to cover your whole head. For $5 to $10 you can buy an approved hard hat which, considering all the stuff that will be flying about and falling from trees, seems a wise buy. Finally, add a pair of good goggles ($10-$20) to keep smoke and hot ash out of your eyes, and you're done.

With the possible exception of the shoes/boots, virtually everyone already has such an outfit or could rather easily afford one.

The next step up is a significant one. This involves purchase of a set of outerwear called a brush outfit. These can be had in heavy cotton canvas fabrics treated for fire resistance, or the artificial fiber known as Nomex which is fireproof. The outfit consists of loose-fitting trousers to go over a pair of pants, and a loose jacket. A set will cost from less than $100 for fire resistant cotton, to as much as $300 for the Nomex. They are available from many suppliers by mail order or from a local Los Angeles company. There are many variants-the local company supplies Los Angeles County and City Fire Departments-but any of them will do.

If you are going to spring for Nomex you will certainly want a hard hat. You may also want to spend another $100 or so on a good filter mask to protect your nose, throat and lungs from smoke, soot and hot embers.

All told a reasonable set of PPE as a private individual staying to protect your own home will cost anywhere from perhaps $200 (including good boots) to $500-$600.

NOTE WELL: Do not try to use wet cloths or kerchiefs to keep cool or keep smoke out of your lungs. Dr. Radtke, as many other people, advises doing so, but his assumption is that people will not be attempting to deal directly with the fire. A wet kerchief will filter at least some of the smoke particles and pollutants.

However this is unsafe, except at considerable distance from the fire. In the first place, at close range the heat of the fire will suck up moisture almost as fast as you can pour it on. More seriously, if you get too close and a blast of super-heated air catches you, that water can flash to steam almost instantly. Scalding burns are very serious, and such burns about the face or in the airways can be life-threatening.

House Protection
Most homes and other structures can be defended against wildfire if certain precautions have been taken beforehand. It boils down to an equation taking into account the heat load on the structure and the duration of the load. The higher the heat and the longer it lasts the more likely the structure will be lost. Anything that reduces the heat load by maintaining space between the structure and the fire will make a structure more likely to survive. Also, the longer the structure can tolerate high heat without bursting into flame the more likely it is to survive.

This is captured in Figure 14 (see print edition) copied from work being done at the U.S. Forest Service Fire Sciences Laboratory in Missoula, Montana. There, Dr. Cohen is developing a comprehensive Structure Ignition Assessment Model (SIAM) for use by fire agencies as well as homeowners. This is intended to be a more realistic and reliable guide than the simple models introduced earlier from Virginia and Utah.

Keep in mind that the most dangerous wildfire in Topanga is being driven by Santa Ana winds--which means that it is likely to pass over or around a structure within a few minutes--so exposure to heat may be severe, but of short duration. Exactly how it would affect any particular structure cannot be predicted, but this is a factor that needs to be considered.

For present purposes we will assume that brush has been cleared to local codes and that a minimum of a 30-foot defensible area immediately around the structure/home has been cleared. We will also assume that the roof is at least a Class A fire resistant roof and that vents have been protected. What can a homeowner or group of neighbors do to actively protect their homes?

A short list of feasible alternatives is:
1. Provide a source of water matched to the size of the structure(s) to be protected. The volume of water in gallons should be equal to or exceed the total volume of the structure to be protected expressed in cubic feet. This works for individual homes of normal home construction

2. Provide sufficient quantities of firefighting foam or gel

3. Provide sufficient hose to reach all parts of the structure(s)

4. Provide a pump of sufficient capacity

Sources of water for firefighting have to be provided by the homeowner. Unfortunately, for many reasons and over a long period Topanga has outgrown its piped water supply. We cannot be certain that in a major wildfire sufficient water at the needed pressure will be available everywhere in the Canyon.

A swimming pool is an excellent source of water for firefighting and is usually more than sufficient for the home it is attached to. For an individual home the solution is a floating pump which draws directly from the pool. Several manufacturers are available and have local dealers. The cost is in the range of $1,400-$3,000. Given the cost of replacing a home (or the sheer hassle of dealing with the aftermath even if the insurance company is cooperative) this does not seem an unreasonable figure.

Pumps and hose, however, require some maintenance and some training, both of which are continuing items. One cannot leave such equipment to gather dust for years at a time and expect it to function perfectly. Nor can one expect a person to operate such equipment in a real situation without periodic drills and practice.

Any reservoir of water will do--fish pond, water tanks required as a condition of building, or tanks purchased for the purpose of providing a firefighting reserve. I have two plastic tanks totalling about 1,300 gallons which I keep filled with winter runoff from my roof gutters.

Those 1,300 gallons are insufficient water for my house. They are sufficient when used in a foam or gel system to cover my house. Foam and gel are the latest additions to the homeowner's tools for self-defense. They work by capturing water in a relatively stable form that will cling to surfaces. When the heat from the fire arrives, it evaporates the water which keeps the underlying structure relatively cool. If other defensive measures have been effective and the fire moves on quickly enough, then the foam or gel will have done its job.

The tactics in case of the use of foam/gel are to foam the structure some time before the fire-front arrives. Just how long before is a matter of judgment and how long the foam/gel can be expected to remain effective. The homeowner can then go to a safe place to wait for the fire to pass. If this safe area is close to the home, the owner can return to deal with the fire's aftermath--smoldering embers, spot fires or whatever.

Houses are lost to these causes after surviving the main fire if no one is around to catch them. Perhaps the major advantage of the foams/gels is that an owner can take protective action, retreat to a safe place and yet return soon enough to deal with the embers and small fires. Using water alone, the owner has to stay throughout to keep the structure cool and wet until the fire-front has passed. Of course, the users of foams/gels must have prepared this safe place. The safe place, however, may be the house itself.

The maintenance and training requirements for foam/gel users are just as strict as for the users of water systems.

We have catalogs of hoses and pumps. How many and what kind of each are technical questions. The requirements for these are similar for water-only and foam/gel systems.

An alternative foam system uses pressurized nitrogen gas to lay foam over the whole house through a system of pre-installed pipes. One advantage of the system is that it can be triggered automatically. The other systems require that someone be present to operate them. These are large, relatively expensive systems that only experts can design and install. They minimize the burden on the homeowner and will operate even if the house is unattended.

A potential disadvantage is that these are one-time use systems that have to be maintained and reloaded after each use. It does sometimes happen that a change in wind speed or direction will cause a fire to reverse itself or come around to a previously burned area a second time. If there is sufficient unburned fuel to sustain the fire, or if embers are tossed up by the wind, a second threat could be created.

However, as we said, a wildfire is a complex phenomenon. Many strange and unusual things will occur in the course of any significant fire and most of them cannot be foreseen. Which of these general kinds of systems are a best fit for an particular home, structure or neighborhood is a function of particular characteristics.

A list, far from comprehensive, of dealers in these systems is in Appendix A.

Maintain Your Priorities
We have referred perhaps too often to the unpredictability of wildfires. We have done so, however, out of concern that some people fall victim to an alluring fallacy. Sometimes increased safety measures have the paradoxical effect of making the situation less safe. People are often moved to adopt increased safety measures because they become uncomfortable with their assessment of the risks they see around them. Safety measures reduce that apprehension. But the reduced perception of risk may allow, or even encourage, people to accept a higher level of risk than they otherwise would.

Thus, providing sources of water, pumps and hoses might encourage some people to be less than diligent about brush clearing or maintaining a defensible space around their homes. Worst of all, false confidence may cause some people to run risks they should not, or lead them to delay evacuation until too late. Having a good Nomex brush suit and face mask might encourage some people to get closer to a fire than they otherwise might.

These people are making a bad trade--they are trading away their safety margin by accepting a higher level of risk.

Maintaining your priorities means remembering that all the precautions you took were not designed to make you a firefighter. They were designed to increase the likelihood that a valuable asset--your home--would survive a local hazard.

But, your most valuable asset is your life and the lives of your family. Don't let the warm feeling of having accomplished one purpose make you lose sight of a higher one.