I received an email from Progressive through which I have my homeowner's insurance with tips for how to make a home wildfire ready. Before reading the tips, I wanted to come up with my own tips for how one would make a home "wildfire ready."
- Ensure that the 100-foot area surrounding your home has plenty of dried-out vegetation, dead plants, needles, sticks, and other combustible materials. This includes the yard, roof, and gutters. Some people in urban areas may make a trip to Home Depot to purchase combustible materials for this purpose. It is an additional cost but well worth it. You want to make sure that your home has the highest chance of going up in flames. If there is a large gap of noncombustible space between your home and the oncoming fire, this makes it far less likely that the home will ignite.
- Store flammable items inside and immediately next to your home. Firewood, patio furniture, propane tanks, stacks of firewood, Amazon boxes, wooden sheds, all make ideal starting points for a fire that will then transfer to your home and ideally burn it to the ground.
- Sign up for emergency alerts so that you know when a wildfire is approaching. You don't want to be caught off guard with a wildfire catching you unprepared. Make sure your home and the surrounding area are ready, remove any important documents, belongings, and family heirlooms, and store them in a safe location. And of course, you and your family should not be at home when the fire starts no matter how much you want to witness the utter destruction of the dwelling where your children grew up.
- Have a plan. Make sure that everyone in the family is on the same page. If one person goes rogue and starts cleaning up debris or turning on the hose to create a wet perimeter around the property, it's just going to delay the inevitable.
Well are you a good swimmer? lol
But yes I guess then you're house is FLOOD READY!