HELENA — The plants and materials around your home hold the potential to either endanger your home during a wildfire or possibly help keep it safer during such an event.
The Firewise Demonstration Garden in Montana City provides some really great examples of plants and materials that can hopefully help keep your home safer during a wildfire.
The garden has various fire-resistant and drought-resistant plants as well as fire-resistant building materials like gravel, sheet metal for roofs, and fire-resistant deck material like Trex.
"If you can have a fire on the ground when it hits your home, you're so much better off. If you've done some ignition-resistant construction, that helps. But if the fire is not coming at you from a group of trees or junipers or some kind of real heavy flammable shrubs, if it comes at your house like that, it's very difficult to not have the house or something around the house catch on fire. So, it's much, much better if a fire is on the ground when it hits you," says Lois Olsen, President of the Board of the Tri-County Firesafe Working Group
Mike McFerrin, a former Sheriff's Office deputy, former Canyon Ferry Fire Chief, and previous member of the Tri-County Firesafe Working Group, took that information seriously.
McFerrin lives off Jimtown Road right next to where the Horse Gulch Fire burned. His home was less than a quarter mile from the edge of the fire.
But because of the fuel-thinning work he had done, lawn mowing, adding a green belt, and using fire-resistant materials on his home, as well as backfire work and a dozer line done by firefighting agencies, his home was safe from the fire.
McFerrin has taken the suggestions from the Tri-County Firesafe Working Group seriously and made improvements to his property to better protect himself and his home.
"Anybody that hasn't done the fuel mitigation work or tried to make their home fire resistant, all bets are off, because I know, after having been a volunteer firefighter, we don't have enough fire trucks to put one at every house when a fire of this size is going," says McFerrin.
For those interested in becoming more fire safe, a good time to transplant plants is in September. And the Tri-County Firesafe Working Group provides free assessments for homes that can help steer you in a more fire safe direction.
