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Homes in the hills north of San Antonio may face similar wildfire risks like those on the West Coast

A Type 1 Helicopter drops water on the Mayfield Fire in San Saba County on May 17, 2022
Courtesy photo
/
Texas A&M Forest Service
A Type 1 Helicopter drops water on the Mayfield Fire in San Saba County on May 17, 2022.

There are rolling hills west of Los Angeles and stretching to the Pacific Coast covered with homes — many now charred by recent wildfires.

North and northwest of San Antonio are similar hills that make up the Texas Hill Country. They too are covered with homes as the region's population grows, especially with retirees and other homebuyers. Some seek the quiet life, and others just want a home with "a Hill Country view."

But do they face the same vulnerabilities as homes in California?

The Texas A&M Forest Service reports that many of these Texas homes in the hills are served by volunteer fire departments, which means longer response times to an emergency. Forest Service Spokeswoman Dayziah Petruska said it could take up to an hour for some of these departments to arrive on the scene of a wildfire in a remote area. She said the long response time could be the same for her agency in some spots of Texas.

She said forest service experts constantly access fire weather conditions where wildfires could break out at any time and stage equipment and personnel accordingly. "Based off fire weather, we staff in different areas of the state, with that being our own employees," she explained. "And then we also bring in — whether it be out-of-state or Texas Intrastate Fire Mutual Aid System. So, those are structure firefighters who have been trained to do wildland firefighting."

Petruska said Fredericksburg is a hub where heavier equipment is kept at the ready for Hill Country fires.

So prevention is important. She explained that residents in those hilly communities can take important preemptive steps to protect their homes from a wildfire.

Petruska said the first step is to check "structure ignition zones" outside of the home — one zone should be five feet from the home and the other zone should measure 30 feet from the home.

For the five-foot zone, she offered this checklist: "No combustible material. No plants underneath your windowsill. If you have a garden bed and there's mulch in it, you want to do something non-combustible, like rocks. You also want to make sure your gutters stay clean, and if you can, you have like a one-eighth-inch metal screening on your vents and under your eves."

For the 30-foot zone, she said: "Keep your grass low and mowed and taken care of, [and] where it's watered ... green, and healthy," Petruska said. "Prune trees up to six feet. If your tree is not six feet tall, the recommendation is one-third of the height of the tree."

Keeping trees pruned up and grass low keeps the two from combining to fuel a wildfire.

She said for larger properties, another structure ignition zone 100 feet out could be created following the advice above.

She explained the zones also give firefighters more room to do their work to save properties and lives.

Petruska added that fire also travels faster up hills, and cedar trees are a particular concern — they're full of resin and are very combustible.

She said it's important to control the number of embers that could be created by a wildfire. Those little smoldering chunks of vegetation or debris can become airborne and spark another fire where they land, sometimes far away.

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