Prevention
Wildfire Prevention
When people think of wildfire prevention, they often conjure images of Smokey Bear and his timeless message “Only You Can Prevent Forest Fires!”
The message has changed over time, but the goal is the same: prevent sparks that can start wildfires. Staying aware, paying attention, and using common sense go a long way. Smokey Bear reminds us of the simple actions we can take to help prevent wildfires.
A Smokey Bear Wildfire Prevention Program can be scheduled for your event by submitting a request online.
Be aware of current fire danger conditions.
The Huron-Manistee National Forests uses the Canadian Forest Fire Danger Rating System to help determine Preparedness Levels. Using this tool helps Fire Managers to identify critical times when fires can become difficult to control.
Be aware of current and predicted fire weather for your area and/or destination.
Fire weather discussions between adjacent national forests, national parks, state agencies and the National Weather Service generally begins in mid-April depending on forest conditions and weather forecasts.
Using this tool and key measurement components such as the Ignition Component, Energy Release Component, Burning Index, and more, help fire managers identify critical times when fires can be difficult to control.
Reviewing operating plans, weather trends, and forest conditions helps forest leadership determine when the need for fire restrictions will be applied.
Check for Fire Restrictions or Closures
Follow our Alerts for updates about current restrictions
It’s important to learn how to be safe around your campfire. A campfire is also a huge responsibility. We need your help in preventing your campfire from becoming a wildfire.
Follow these tips from Smokey Bear to be safe around a campfire:
Picking Your Spot
- DO NOT build a campfire if the campground or area rules prohibit them.
- DO NOT build a campfire in hazardous, dry conditions.
- Take wind, and its direction, into account when choosing the site. Choose a spot that’s protected from gusts.
- Check overhead for low hanging limbs that can catch fire from convective heat.
Preparing Your Spot
- Clear a 10-foot-diameter area around the site. Remove any grass, twigs, leaves and firewood.
- Dig a pit in the dirt, about a foot deep. Circle the pit with rocks.
- DO NOT build a campfire in a pit with roots. Fire can travel into the root system and potentially kill the tree and lead to a wildfire.
Building Your Campfire
- Make sure you have a source of water, a bucket and shovel nearby at all times.
- Gather wood from the ground. DO NOT cut whole trees or branches, dead or alive. Live materials won’t burn, and you’ll be damaging the forest.
- The three sizes of wood to use:
- Tinder: Small twigs and dry leaves, grass and needles.
- Kindling: Sticks smaller than 1″ around.
- Fuel: Larger pieces of wood. Keep these stacked upwind, away from the fire.
Maintaining Your Campfire
- Keep the fire small and under control.
- Once you have a strong fire going, add larger pieces of dry wood to keep it burning steadily.
- DO NOT allow logs, limbs or branches to stick outside of the fire ring. This may help carry a spark to the wildland and risks a potential wildfire.
- DO NOT burn household or camping debris, garbage or recyclable materials. These can give off toxic fumes or attract animals to your campsite.
- DO NOT burn dangerous things like aerosol cans, pressurized containers, glass or aluminum cans. They could explode, shatter and/or create harmful fumes or dust.
- Never leave the campfire unattended or underattended.
Extinguishing Your Campfire
DROWN, STIR, FEEL, REPEAT!
- Allow your fire to burn down to white ash when possible. Pulling apart firewood in the fire pit can help release heat and begin to cool the coals.
- Drown ALL embers, not just the red ones by slowly pouring lots of water on the fire. Be careful of steam from the fire which can cause burns.
- Stir the fire pit to help the water cool the coals, add more water and keep stirring.
- Make sure no exposed or smoldering embers are present.
- Lower your bare hand over the coals to feel for heat.
- If the coals are still warm, repeat with water to continue drowning and keep stirring.
- If you can touch the coals and the coals are cold, then the fire is dead out and you can leave the fire ring.
Remember: If it’s too hot to touch, it’s too hot to leave.
- Spark arresters are required on all portable gasoline-powered equipment. This includes tractors, harvesters, chainsaws, weed-eaters and mowers.
- Keep the exhaust system, spark arresters and mower in proper working order and free of carbon buildup.
- Use the recommended grade of fuel and don’t top it off.
- Don’t drive your vehicle onto dry grass or brush. Hot exhaust pipes and mufflers can start fires that you won’t even see – until it’s too late!
- Burning can only be done on permissive burn days
- Verify that Burn Permits are being issued in your municipality by checking online.
- Landscape debris piles must be in small 4 feet by 4 feet piles.
- Maximum pile size is 4 feet in diameter.
- Clear all flammable material and vegetation within 10 feet of the outer edge of pile.
- Keep a water supply and shovel close to the burning site.
- A responsible adult is required by law to be in attendance until the fire is out.
- No burning shall be undertaken unless weather conditions (particularly wind) are such that burning can be considered safe.
- Only burn dry, natural vegetation, such as leaves, grass, limbs, brush, stumps and evergreen needles
- Be aware of the Michigan Department of Environment and Great Lakes and Energy’s Open Burning Regulations
- Practice safe towing by securing chains to tow trailers. Dragging chains throws sparks. Use appropriate safety pins and hitch ball to secure chains. Twist them to lift them from dragging or use a sleeve to cover them and raise them off the ground.
- Make sure your vehicle is properly maintained, with nothing dragging on the ground. such as chains or the exhaust systems.
- Check tire pressure to ensure it is maintained to manufacture standards. Driving on exposed wheel rims will throw sparks.
- Carry a fire extinguisher in your vehicle and learn how to use it.
- Don’t drive your vehicle onto dry grass or brush. hot exhaust pipes and mufflers can start fires that you won’t even see—until it’s too late!
- Properly maintain brakes as worn brakes can cause metal to metal contact, which can cause a spark.
- Place your targets on dirt or gravel and areas free of dry vegetation—and avoid shooting on hot windy days. Bullet fragments can be extremely hot and can easily start a fire.
- Use paper targets or clay pigeons as shooting at steel targets or rocks may throw sparks into the nearby vegetation.
- Ensure your ammunition type has lead core bullets which are less likely to ignite surrounding vegetation, unlike steel core and solid copper ammunition which have the highest potential to start fires.
- Avoid destructive exploding targets.
- Ammunition that “burns,” such as incendiary or tracer ammunition, can easily ignite vegetation and should not be used in flammable areas
- Keep a shovel, fire extinguisher and extra water on hand, in case a fire does start.
Wildfire Mitigation
In 2018 more than 58,000 fires burned nearly nine million acres across the U.S. More than 25,000 structures were destroyed, including 18,137 residences and 229 commercial structures.
Research in the area of home destruction vs. home survival in wildfires point to embers and small flames as the main way that the majority of homes ignite in wildfires. Burning pieces of airborne wood and/or vegetation called embers can be carried more than a mile through the wind causing spot fires and igniting homes, debris and other objects.
Homeowners can prepare their homes to withstand ember attacks and minimize the likelihood of flames or surface fire igniting the home or any attachments.
From Home Hardening to creating Fire Adapted Communities, mitigation helps homeowners mitigate the spread of wildfire with a little sweat equity in activities to reduce the risk of a home ignition.
The buffer you create between a building on your property and the grass, trees, shrubs, or any wildland area that surrounds it is called Defensible Space. This space helps protect your home from catching fire as it can slow or even stop direct flames from a wildfire or burning neighboring home; radiant heat from nearby burning plants or structures; and flying embers. Proper defensible space also provides emergency responders, including firefighters, a safe area to work in to defend your home or respond to any emergency.
In the 1990s, retired USDA Forest Service fire scientist Jack Cohen developed breakthrough experimental research into how homes ignite due to the effects of radiant heat in and on three identified home ignition zones (HIZs). Home Hardening activities can range from time saving repairs and maintenance, like roof repairs or replacement on your home, to weekend general maintenance activities like cleaning gutters and moving wood piles. The Insurance Institute of Business and Home Safety collaborates with the Missoula Technology and Development Center to investigate the Home Ignition Zone and ember behavior. They have developed a guide for Firewise and the National Fire Protection Association that looks at wildfire specific regions, including the Great Lakes Region.
Every community has a unique set of circumstances and resources, so the kinds of actions they implement in response to wildfire will vary. Community Wildfire Protection Plans (CWPPs) allow communities to develop priorities that affect their ability to survive a wildland fire. Egress, education and water availability are some of the issues that communities may address in their plans.
The Fire Adapted Communities (FAC) Initiative and the FAC Learning Network are helping homeowners, communities and land managers in fire-prone areas prepare to “live with fire” safely.
An FAC acknowledges and takes responsibility for its wildfire risk and implements appropriate actions at all levels such as addressing resident safety, homes, neighborhoods, businesses and infrastructure, forests, parks, open spaces and other community assets. Sustaining, growing and adapting strategies, partnerships, and capacity through time are key. Visit Fire Adapted Communities and Firewise USA for more information.
No matter what precautions are taken and no matter how much work and effort is put into fire prevention and wildland/urban interface fire fighting, fires have a mind of their own. And the best way for us to help you, is if you help us.
As more and more homeowners and camp owners move in and around our national forests a new danger to wildfires has developed called Urban Interface Fires. These are wildfires that affect both forests and communities in and around the forests. Because of this, FireWise, an interagency program, was developed to help homeowners and camp owners learn how to keep their homes and camps safer from wildfires.
The program covers important information about clearing trees around your home or camp, building materials for construction, and having an emergency/disaster plan for your home.
There are a lot of things you can do to protect yourself and your home. Most of the ideas from FireWise are simple and easy to do; and could save your home from a fire. For instance-
- Have a pathway or walkway around your yard that will separate forest vegetation from your yard.
- Space brush and trees around your yard- this will help prevent fires from spreading from tree to tree to your roof.
- If you cut a tree down in or around your yard- remove the debris quickly as a precaution, don't have a lot of yard waste that could ignite.
- Pile your firewood away from your house.
- Have a 3-foot fire free area around your home- gravel around the foundation or even not having shrubs or plants closer than 3 feet to the house.
- Make sure that dead plant life is removed from the 3 foot perimeter around your home- the dead and dried will ignite faster than the living plant life.
- Create your own firebreak- have a permitter of thinned vegetation around your yard to help slow and maybe even stop the spread of a wildfire.
- Make sure that shrubbery and trees are native and not inclined to burn quickly.
These are just a few of the many suggestions and ideas that FireWise has developed to help protect homes from wildland fires.
Below are some photos of FireWise homes that are urban interface on the Huron-Manistee National Forests. These are homes near you. They aren't homes from California or Colorado or anywhere else out west, they are right here in Michigan.
If you look closely at the photo to the left, at first glance it looks like the forest comes right up to the house. But look again. The trees directly around the house are thinned out and there doesn't appear to be any brush or debris around the house. You can see the area around the road is cleared and the yard is big enough to allow fire trucks to turn around. And as you can see in the picture- this house was saved. The fire surrounded it and one of the factors that helped save this home was the use of the FireWise techniques.
Another example of FireWise that worked well was a homeowner created firebreak. It has long been a practice of firefighters to create "firebreaks" or areas that are cleared of trees, shrubbery and debris- or to use existing breaks such as roads, that will help keep a fire from spreading.
This is a Forest Service created firebreak. It's only a few feet wide and it stopped this fire from moving forward towards someone's home.