Firewise was developed by the National Fire Protection Association (NFPA) and is a cooperative effort among local, state, federal, and private agencies and organizations to promote fire safety in the wildland/urban interface.
Firefighters do not have the resources to defend every home during a wildfire. Firewise communities are those that have taken appropriate measures to mitigate or prevent wildfire structural damage.
Hidden Hills Firewise, which encompasses all of Hidden Hills, works to achieve the objectives of the Firewise program by addressing the four major components of the program. The following four steps are required to become a Firewise-recognized community:
- Create a group of volunteers to represent your community
- Complete a Community Risk Assessment
- Develop a three-year action plan
- Keep track of Firewise Activities’ hours and dollars
CLICK HERE to go to the Hidden Hills Firewise page to understand the details of how your Hidden Hills plans to achieve Firewise status.
We will be doing online and in-person community educational presentations. You will walk away from these discussions with a good understanding of the requirements of the benefits of Firewise and how Home Hardening and Defensible Space with save lives and property in Hidden Hills. We are here to help in this process!
One requirement worth discussing here is the annual volunteer hour/dollar requirement for performing Firewise activities. The number of hours to qualify must be equal to the number of homes in each community, or another way of saying this is that you must average one hour per home per year. There are a large number of qualifying activities that you or your gardener may do on a regular basis, such as cutting grass, trimming trees and bushes, removing trees or bushes, making certain improvements to the structure of your home, and many more. Even hours spent watching related videos or reading-related documents will qualify.
When you perform these activities, we provide a very simple way for you to capture the hours on our website. CLICK HERE to submit the hours that you or your contractor have spent. You can enter this weekly or monthly for typical yard maintenance activities.
The good news is that we track all of the hours and vegetation removed (when required) for the Hidden Hills Firewise program.
This is truly a community effort that helps to protect both your individual home and your local and broader community from wildfire. We look forward to working with you!