Get a FREE home assessment
Home Ignition Zone
Landowners are encouraged to maintain the area within 200 feet around their home (known as the Home Ignition Zone, or HIZ) and use ignition resistant building materials to sustain a wildfire adapted home, property, and community. Priority for all project work will be focused on the home and/or structures and work outwards to the extended zone.
This graphic shows the zone around your home that will be better prepared to withstand a wildfire:
Home Hardening
During a wildfire, embers can be carried by the wind from over a mile away. These embers can land on your roof, accumulate at the base of your walls, and infiltrate your home through vents and other openings. They can also ignite materials on or under decks. Embers are responsible for 90% of structures destroyed by wildfire. "Owning Your Zone" is the process of making your existing home and out buildings more wildfire resilient through home retrofitting and maintenance techniques.
Changes to your deck, roof and vents can make the difference between a total loss and saving your home. This may sound expensive, but many tasks can be completed with some sweat equity and a little time:
Home projects
- Remove roof and yard debris like leaves and pine needle from gutters, your roof, and around fences
- Cost: DIY
- Create a buffer zone around your house: Clear vegetation, shrubs, juniper bushes and other combustible materials to create a five-foot buffer around your home.
- Cost: $$ (may require a contractor)
- Install flame- and ember-resistant vents
- Cost: $ (inexpensive)
- Remove vegetation, firewood, and other combustible materials from on top of and underneath your deck
- Cost: DIY
- Install a Class A-rated roof, like asphalt fiberglass or metal panels.
- Cost: $$$ (requires a professional)
- Replace wood or plastic fences that are attached to your home with non-combustible, metal fencing.
- Cost: $$ (may require a contractor)
- Enclose low decks and areas under bay windows with mesh screening or a ventilated, non-combustible material
- Cost: $ (inexpensive)
- Remove branches and overhang the roof or gutters or are touching your home.
- Cost: $ (inexpensive)
- Replace at least the lower foot of wood or vinyl siding with fiber cement, stucco, brick or stone siding
- Cost: $$ (may require a contractor)
- Enclose open eaves with noncombustible soffit
- Cost: $$ (may require a contractor)
- Replace old windows and doors with dual-paned, tempered glass
- Cost: $$$ (requires a professional)
- Replace wooden decking with fire-rated composite material, metal or lightweight conrete
- Cost: $$$ (requires a professional)
Managing fuels
According to the US Forest Service, "fuel is a broad term that encompasses all of the vegetation, sticks, logs, needles, and organic soils (peat or duff) that are available to burn in any particular fire. Different 'layers' of fuel–often referred to as surface, ladder, and canopy fuels–have different impacts on fire behavior and spread."
You can manage fuels like grass and vegetation by....
- Organizing community chip days with your neighbors
- Burning wood and debris at certain times of the year, depending on weather conditions. Make sure you purchase a burn permit first!
- Participating in the Missoula County wildfire mitigation cost-share program. Click here for more information.
- If you live near a heavily forested area, working with a DNRC service forester to determine ways to reduce risk
- Plant native and fire-wise plants. Check out this guide from MSU Extension to get started.
- Consider xeriscaping using pavers and rocks
- Keeping grass irrigated and mowed