Preparing for a fire..
Several of our OPS team members are fire fighters in addition to their responsibilities at OPS. This means they volunteer their time and talents helping to minimize or prevent damage from the fires ravaging California and the Napa Valley. In this article, we want to share some very basic steps you can take that will maximize the possibility of your property surviving and minimize damage should fire creep onto your property.
Clean & Clear!
The first priority is to clear brush, trees and anything that can burn away from your structures, the further back the better! This also means cleaning the leaves from your gutters and removing the leaves from around your structures! Those leaves are a thick, flammable layer that are often overlooked during fire preparation.
While the tank and piping were metal in this water system, the fire was able to create significant damage because many trees and large amounts of brush and leaves were in proximity to the equipment.
Clearly Marked water Sources
If you have a tank with a dedicated fire hydrant, is the hydrant buried in weeds? Does it have a blue reflector next to it? Is it painted green, brown or with camouflage paint so you don’t have to look at it? If you can’t find or know where your nearest fire hydrant is, it is unlikely that in the smoke and stress of an active fire that the fire crews will be able to locate your hydrant! Remove the weeds, pick up a blue reflector from the hardware store, make a sign that says “Fire Hydrant”, flush the hydrant and make sure the valve isn’t stuck closed or that it doesn’t flow dirty water. Check and make sure the tank that feeds the fire hydrant is full of relatively clean water. Clean the debris from around the fire tank! Fire crews are suspicious of many homeowner’s fire hydrants. They are often found with valves frozen shut, have no water available or are fully of water so dirty and foul the fire crews are afraid it will damage their pumping equipment. Give them every reason to want to use your hydrant!
In this situation it appears that construction materials/debris was left near the well house, caught on fire and burned.
Give fire fighters a leg up!
In a firestorm firefighters have to make quick decisions about where they can make a stand and what houses they can save. They ask questions like: Is there a source of water available for firefighting? Is this house/property defensible? Is there a safe retreat if we can’t hold the fire back? If they see your property has been cleared of weeds, leaves, branches and that a water source is readily available and then they look next door at a property with trees and brush growing wild next to the house, through the yard and over the driveway… where are they going to make a stand? Where do they have the best chance of success? When the fires rage and the fire crews have only finite resources, give them every reason to think that they can succeed in protecting your property!
Firefighters made a quick “scratch line” around this well equipment which helped slow the fire & reduce the damage, but having all the duff/leaves cleared would have resulted in no damage at all! Note the quantity of leaves that have fallen in just a week or two since the fire.
Take a second glance
So you’ve cleared the brush and leaves, moved that stack of fire wood or lumber. Is there anything else? Do you have any fuel cans that should be put in a safe place? Did you go clear brush and leaves away from your well site or storage tank site? Our crews are working to help repair the damage from the recent fires and, in some cases, the only damages people suffered were to their water systems that were forgotten about out in the woods!
This tank isn’t damaged…YET! Notice the large quantity of leaves/duff and the nearby trees and branches? This plastic tank and piping will be permanently damaged if fire gets too close!
“Fire Harden” your property.
While clearing leaves and brush is a must, there are additional measures that can be taken to minimize any fire damage. In some cases a few wheel-barrels of dirt/gravel can be placed over exposed pipes/electrical conduits on the ground to “fire harden” them. You may want to have electrical wiring run underground and buried instead of run on the surface. You may want to install a cement pad/gravel pad for your well and equipment to clearly define the burn perimeter and make it easy to blow/clean away leaves and debris. Some homeowners opt to install steel pipes at critical places where piping is exposed while other people go as far as putting their well equipment in a cinder block building to protect it!
Our crew at OPS is busy helping our customers restore water and rebuild after the recent fires! If we can help you rebuild and restore, please contact us and we will do our best to help in your situation.
Don’t assume your pipes are buried and safe! These pipes were under a thick layer of flammable leaves. To fire harden this site the piping should be buried under dirt or gravel and the leaves, sticks and duff cleaned away regularly!