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SAN DIEGO — San Diegans know that defensible space is all too important when it comes to protecting your home from wildfires , and fire experts told CBS 8 that there are plenty of other things you can do to be proactive.
“Ok, so what we have here is a rain gutter that is just littered with leaves and debris. You can see how dry this gets and if an ember gets into this, it’s poof. It’s just going to light up,” said Andrew Merrick, owner of Aquatech Rain Gutters , while clenching a fistful of pine needles.
“So what we would want to do is first clean out all of this. I mean, the amount of debris is just, you know. It just starts fire,” said Merrick.
Experts say that when rain gutters are not cleaned out frequently, the leaf litter that builds up inside of it will act like a wick.
“When an ember during a wildland fire lands inside of the wick area, it will ignite both sides of the material,” said Jason McBroom, Fire Marshal for the Alpine Fire Protection District.
“Vinyl rain gutters are very susceptible because the vinyl will begin to melt, and it falls straight down into the combustible bed down here. The wood chips, mulch, and bark acts like a smoldering fire, so it’ll be a ground-creeping fire with direct heat and flame impingement against the structure and going inside a very vulnerable location here in the underfloor vents," said McBroom.
Merrick installs mostly aluminum rain gutters for this reason, and he even recommends mesh screens made out of stainless steel that let water in but keep debris out.
“Now that I’ve cleaned the rain gutter out, I’m going to go ahead and set this device above it,” said Merrick while placing the mesh screen over the rain gutter. “It keeps all the debris from entering the gutter again, so we’re going to simply slide it in here. We’ll attach it with some screws to the front, so it stays in place.”
Fire Captain Neil Czapinski with CAL FIRE has a few more tips for fire protection around your home.
“When you leave the beards on the palm trees, that could be a real easy way for it to catch an ember, catch on fire, and from that point it can cast embers everywhere into your neighbor’s house and yards and everything else,” said Czapinski. “In the gable vents like that big one right there on the fire station, you can put the 16-inch mesh behind that and it will help stop some of those embers coming through that can catch your attic space on fire as well.”
And of course, Czapinski stresses the importance of clearing defensible space around your home.
“It gives us a better chance to defend your home because if you’ve done your due diligence and we come to a property and it’s defendable, we can come in, do a few quick things, come back, and help save your home and move on to the next,” said Czapinski. “It gives everybody a fighting chance.”
For more information, visit readyforwildfire.org .
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