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Risks to your home from wildfire -
Protect your home from wildfire -
Wildfire safer housing guide
Embers
Embers are the leading cause of home losses.
Embers from fires are carried to homes by wind. They can travel kilometres from a large fire and land on or near a house, where they ignite flammable material.
Embers will settle in areas around your home, often where leaves and other windblown material gathers.
Keep your house clear of flammable materials that can ignite from embers:
- Hessian door mats
- Leaf build up in roof gutters
- Open windows, doors or vents
- Under house where flammable material is stored
- Underneath decks
- Outdoor furniture covers
Ground fire
Ground fires are typically fires that burn through low vegetation such as dry grass on the ground.
Ground fires will burn faster upslope or downwind. Remember, if it’s attached to the house, its part of the house.
These fires can burn a house down by:
- Burning through uninterrupted fuel (like tall dry grass) right up to the house
- Burning along attachments to a house, such as fences, decks, garden edging or trellis
Radiant heat
Fires produce a lot of radiant heat that can pre-heat and ignite the flammable parts of a home.
Make sure there are no large heat sources near your house:
- Wood piles
- Vehicles
- Large trees
Protect your home from wildfire
Your home and everything up to 60 meters surrounding it will determine if a fire can burn your house down.
Unlike floods, hurricanes or earthquakes, there are simple and often inexpensive ways to make your home safer and increase its chances of surviving a fire.
Start with your home and work your way out.
Remove the hazards closest to your home first:
- Keep gutters clean during summer
- Put away outdoor furniture covers when not in use
- Change your doormat to a non-flammable one
- Screen vents and enclose decks so vegetation and debris can’t collect, and embers can't enter
- Don’t store flammable material under or against your house or deck.
- Keep areas that collect debris free over summer months.
- If you have vegetation against your house, consider removing it or replacing plants with less flammable species.
- Use stone, cement, tiles and green grass to create a 'clear zone' around your house so surface fires can’t reach your house
- Keep lawns watered and green during the summer months
- Prune tree branches to a height of 2 meters or more so ground fire can’t ignite them
- Remove all trees, long grass, shrubs and logs branches, twigs and needles within 10 meters of your house, as they are fuel for fire
- Thin trees (with 3-6 meters between crowns) for at least 30 meters from house, this reduces how far and fast a fire can spread
- Ensure your house number is easy for emergency services to find
- Make sure your driveway is wide enough to accommodate emergency vehicles (at least 4 x 4 meters)
- When building or renovating, consider using fire retardant or non-flammable materials, such as corrugated iron roofs, metal fences and double-glazing
- Store firewood 10 meters or more from the house
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If you live closer than 30 meters from your neighbor, it will pay to talk to them. What occurs on their property will impact on yours. Check out our guide to your community responsibility for more information.
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Wildfire prevention and readiness campaign resources
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Wildfire safer housing guide
The risk of wildfire threat to housing is on the increase. Factors such as climate change, modern building methods (the trend to open plan design means houses are less compartmentalised), lightweight and composite building materials (often with a synthetic mix) and denser populations living nearer to the natural environment have significantly increased this risk.
If you’re a homeowner living in a rural environment, we’d like to provide some advice on how to better protect your home from wildfire.
Fire and Emergency New Zealand have proactively developed voluntary guidance for housing design to improve the survivability of standalone homes that could be at risk from wildfire.
Using a combination of national and international research from the two domains of Fire Engineering and Wildfire Science, and input from industry and public stakeholders, we have produced the Wildfire Safer Housing Guide to inform design and offer homeowners better protection from wildfire events in New Zealand.
The Guide has been shared with councils, construction industry bodies and regulators, and at-risk communities to raise awareness of ways to protect homes from wildfires.
