Wilderness Ranch homeowners credit their home's safety with being 'firewise'

BOISE COUNTY -- Every single home in Wilderness Ranch is still standing and undamaged Saturday, despite Thursday night's 20 acre fire. Firefighters say they owe that to the fact that they were able to get to the fire quickly, get additional resources, and that the homeowners were 'firewise'.

"For all intents and purposes, the fire just came up to our lines and stopped, and was deflected up and around," said Fred Pierson, a Wilderness Ranch homeowner. "What we've planned for the last 20 years is for this scenario, and it really did work the way it was supposed to."

It's called being 'firewise,' and means taking steps to protect your home in the hills, on the range, or in the forest from fire.

"Up here, you gotta go down to the firehouse to get the rig, and come back up here," said volunteer firefighter Bill Murray. "You're talking 10 to 15 minutes. That's a lot of time for fire to get built up. So, if you're not aggressive in keeping firewise, you're just asking for trouble."

The big factors in being firewise involve keeping flammable material away from your house and creating a non-flammable patch of ground around your home.

"If it's rock gravel and everything else, it's just going to stop right there to the point where you just have to put it out," Murray said. "Where, if it's tall grass, it's just going to keep going and overrun it."

Without that defensible space, your home could become part of the chain of fuel.

"Anything that's on your house, or near your house that burns is part of the chain of fuel that turns your home into fuel," said Carrie Wiss, who's on the Idaho Firewise Board of Directors and a Wilderness Ranch homeowner. "It's all stuff that takes some labor, doesn't take a lot of money, but it can save your house."

It's work that homeowners say should be done sooner rather than later.

"When the fire is coming at you is not the time to decide what to do," said Pierson. "It can be a dusty, dirty, labor intensive job, but it just has to be done."

To find out more about how to make your home and yourself firewise, you can click here.