01-07-2025
Protecting homes from Oregon wildfires: Defensible space and how it works
A live-fire demonstration showed even on a cloudy and drizzly Oregon day how defensible space and home hardening can protect against fire while buildings without can burn down quickly.
The event, led by the Oregon State Fire Marshal and Insurance Institute for Business & Home Safety (IBHS), was held on June 25 at the Oregon Department of Public Safety Standards and Training in Salem.
The event comes as Oregon faces what could be a challenging wildfire season.
Here's what to know about defensible space and how to protect your home from wildfires.
During the demonstration, the structure that was wildfire defensible had a 5-foot non-combustible buffer between vegetation, a metal fence, non-combustible roof and a fiber cement board window.
The other had vegetation near the house, debris on the roof and no non-combustible features.
Firefighters ignited fire near both structures.
The structure that was not set up with defensible space completely burned down. The one with defensible space was just fine.
Defensible space is a buffer, typically 5-feet, created between a home and the surrounding grass, trees, shrubs or other wildland areas. The purpose of the buffer is to slow or stop a wildfire from burning a structure down.
'The research has shown us that if you can keep that ignition 5-feet away from the structure, you give yourself an amazing chance to be able to survive,' Roy Wright, CEO of IBHS, said. 'Most importantly, the 5-feet closest to it is all non-combustible.'
Wright said gravel would work well to surround a house.
Instead of a wooden fence, a defensible home would have a metal fence, a non-combustible roof, open eaves and fiber-cement board in the windows.
'With these pieces, all that makes it better, but fundamentally, it's this 5-feet,' Wright said.
Oregon State Fire Marshal Mariana Ruiz-Temple said more homes are becoming fuel for wildfires.
'It's no longer just a wildfire out in the forest,' Ruiz-Temple said. 'We're actually seeing that when things like this occur, we are seeing fuels and our fencing actually become the fuels that really start these large conflagrations in Oregon.'
Ruiz-Temple said the easiest thing Oregonians can do to protect their home from a wildfire is to create a 5-foot buffer space.
'We've had our fourth largest, most destructive fire in terms of loss, and it's only June,' Ruiz-Temple said of this year's Rowena Fire.
The fire started June 11 and burned down 56 homes and 91 properties in The Dalles.
'We do expect that conditions are going to continue to worsen over the fire season. If there's anything that we can do now, it's that 0 to 5-foot zone.'
Cottonwood Canyon State Park went up in flames due to the Ferry Fire on June 11 that burned more than 10,000 acres.
Many of the park's structures would have burned, but the park had gone through training with OSFM on creating defensible space.
They cleared vegetation like grass and sagebrush around the buildings, surrounded the structures with gravel and applied metal roofs.
That likely saved the park's showers and bathrooms, information center, picnic shelters, historic barn, cabins, residence, boat shed and 'experience center.'
The park reopened June 20.
Mariah Johnston is an outdoors journalism intern at the Statesman Journal. Reach her at mjohnston@
This article originally appeared on Salem Statesman Journal: How to create a defensible home to prevent Oregon wildfire disasters
