Sparked by the Davis Fire, defensible space can be seen in the above picture. Wooden porch railings were detached from the property, tree that was felled to increase the perimeter of defensible space, and flammable items were placed outside the home and in a visible storage locker.
I sat down with Hunter Noble, the forest manager of the Whittell Forest and Wildlife Area through the University of Nevada, Reno, to learn more about the recent Davis Fire and what we can do moving forward to stay fire safe. For a full transcription, please keep scrolling.
On a dry and windy Saturday in Washoe Valley, Nevada, the Davis Fire sparked to life. Beginning at Davis Creek Regional Park on September 7, 2024, the wildfire burned over 5,800 acres, damaged between 14 and 17 structures, and placed 14,000 people under evacuation notices. The Truckee Meadows Fire Protection District, Humboldt-Toiyabe National Forest, and Southwest Area Incident Management Team worked ceaselessly with crews to extinguish the flames. The fire is now completely out and poses no risk.
As far as wildfires in populated areas go, the Davis Fire could have been much worse. What, then, put out this fire? I asked Hunter Noble, the forest manager for the Whittell Forest and Wildlife Area through the University of Nevada, Reno. Here’s what he had to say.
I think we’ve seen that in other WUI fires –
Really quickly, WUI stands for wildland-urban interface, which is the area where human development meets or mixes with undeveloped wildland. It’s a transition zone between human communities and wild spaces.
In other WUI fires throughout the Sierra and the Sierra front, that when you have wildland fire in an area that has so many homes, either intermixed or a budding vegetation, that we often lose a lot of homes. So that really owes to, I think, two big factors. One was the winds weren’t quite as great as they were forecasted, which is really beneficial. They still were high, so they weren’t able to do a ground attack throughout most of that day. But the night before, there was an incredible effort by the wildland firefighters on the suppression side to put in containment line, dozer line, during the day they were putting in retardant lines. And so that really also helped dampen the extreme fire behavior to where it really did not blow up to what it could have been. We talk a lot about fuel treatments and how that’s important for modifying fire behavior, but in these WUI communities, it really is so much more than just doing that.
So what else can be done? Becoming a true fire-adapted community means a lot of things. Fuel treatments like tree thinning and prescribed fires are necessary, but that is just one piece of the puzzle when it comes to protecting life and property. On a personal level, it is crucial to create defensible space around your home, which means making sure the buildings on your property have fire-resistant materials and your yards have adequate space around these buildings free from landscaping and plants, which can easily carry fire.
Hunter shares that it also means making sure your home is ready on the inside.
For individuals, it’s things like, do they have go bags in their home? You know, if they, if the sheriff knocks in on their door and says, you have a minute to grab everything you need, are they ready to do that? You know, are they ready to leave at the drop of a hat? Because in some cases, it really does come down to that.
Beyond your home, communities need to be ready for the next possible emergency. Do public structures have defensible space, especially in WUI areas? Have communities created egress routes, meaning quick ways to leave a property or community and reach a public space? Are communities ready to organize emergency shelters for humans and animals? Are power companies ready to work through utility outages and are hospitals ready to take in the potential influx of patients?
Davis Fire was not as destructive as it could have been, thanks to tireless fire crews and lucky weather patterns. The biggest lesson we can take away from this natural disaster, then, is how we can be better prepared for the next one. Because in today’s climate, it’s not an if – it’s a when.
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