• Identify highly flammable plants like hopbush, chamise, California sagebrush, eucalyptus, and pines as well as plants and trees with accumulated dead material for focused maintenance. Huff said last winter’s extremely cold weather spells, with several nights of below freezing temperatures, contributed to higher than normal plant mortality.
• Recommend strategically thinning individual plants and plant groupings to ensure they are properly spaced.
• Address removing excess brush (fuels) or breaking up fuels to starve the fire. “We are not prescribing clear cutting entire areas,” explained Huff. “We recommend an effective and aesthetically-pleasing blend of groundcover, shrubs, and trees that when blended properly do not form a continuous fuel bed.”
• Advocate the creation of buffers around structures or other valuable assets, whether sensitive habitat, archeological areas, or rare plants, to minimize chances of these areas igniting.

Huff said landowners and homeowners should also take basic safety steps. These include making sure fuel modification area irrigation is working properly, trimming trees back from structures, removing debris from roofs and rain gutters, and ensuring all openings to the attic eaves and crawl spaces are covered with one-quarter-inch wire mesh.

“The best strategy is to plan ahead and to communicate the importance of annual fuel reduction,” concluded Huff. “HOA newsletters and word-of-mouth are great ways to inform neighbors and the community.”