Fire Safety

Home fire safety

Roughly every 87 seconds a residential fire breaks out. About 79% of all fire-related deaths are attributed to fires in the home. Families, especially those with children or people with physical challenges, should should make a plan for what they will do if a fire does break out. See this link for some basic tips on home fire safety.

Wildfire preparedness means understanding fire weather and

when to evacuate.

Recommended actions for Red Flag days and “extreme fire weather” days from Berkeleyside.

On the few days per year of “extreme fire weather,” Berkeley Fire Dept. recommends that residents in the hills leave before a fire starts and stay elsewhere.

“Leaving early gives you the most control over how you will get down the hill and what you can bring. If you leave after a fire starts, you may not be able to get out with your car, so you must be prepared to evacuate on foot.”

Fire Weather and Evacuation including the Household Fire Weather Planning Tool from City of Berkeley

Wildfire evacuation checklist from City of Berkeley

A Guide to Wildfire Season from Berkeleyside provides preparation advice, evacuation guidance and answers to questions about air quality, power outages, and defending your property

News

Firewise sites are forming across Berkeley. Check out the new city-wide Firewise website for news and information and our neighborhood page for local Firewise news.

"Elemental: Reimagine wildfire" is an excellent film about the fires in Paradise and elsewhere that discusses

research showing how defensible space and home hardening could have saved many homes. Stream for free

until 12/14/2024 and after that for a small fee.

Recently retired city councilmember Susan Wengraf discusses the importance of wildfire preparedness:

https://www.berkeleyside.org/2024/12/05/berkeley-hills-susan-wengraf-wildfire-city-council

A whole new ballgame’: Berkeley’s aggressive new plan to prevent wildfire

Berkeley residents must take responsibility to reduce fire hazards starting now, fire chiefs say.

The Berkeley Hills are kindling: City takes steps to tackle wildfire danger.

The Terrifying Choices Created by Wildfires

One moral of this story: don't wait for official evacuation orders, which can come too late.

How one Bay Area community is taking wildfire watch into its own hands.

Wildfire preparedness resources

Information on Preparing property for wildfire from City of Berkeley

"You are responsible for keeping your property fire safe. Use these tools and resources to manage spaces around your home and increase your property’s wildfire resilience."

The Berkeley Fire Fuel Chipper program will pick up yard waste in front of your home up to 10 times per year. Clearing this kind of flammable debris reduces fire hazards and protects your home. Appointments are required. Sign up for appointments here.

In May 2023, Berkeley launched a new Community Wildfire Protection Plan. See also ‘A whole new ballgame’: Berkeley’s aggressive new plan to prevent wildfire

Five fire preparedness videos from City of Berkeley

This Berkeleyside wildfire guide has advice on fire preparedness, evacuation, air quality, power outages and safeguarding your property.

A guide to wildfire preparedness from CAL FIRE

A guide to Wildfire Safety from PGE

Berkeley city council annual fire safety presentations:

Community Fire Safety Towm Hall 2024
Community Fire Safety Town Hall 2023
Community Fire Safety Meeting 2022
Community Fire Safety Zoomposium 2021

Real-time smoke map from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration

City of Berkeley Fire Safety Inspections

Berkeley Fire Department conducts annual Wildfire Hazard inspections of residences in high fire-risk neighborhoods, including ours. They are conducted by the Wildlife Urban Interface (WUI) Division of the Berkeley Fire Department. The protocol to date is that the inspector will ring your doorbell and, if you are at home, will ask your permission to inspect your property. If you are not home, they will inspect only what is visible from the street. In either case, they will leave a door tag with a code you can use to access your inspection report. Allowing the inspector onto your property has the advantage of giving you a free expert review of any fire risks to your home that you may not be aware of, although it could lead to additional required remediation steps.

A new development in 2024 was that if measures are not taken to remediate any violations noted on your report, there will be a reinspection after 60+ days. If the violations persist, you will be charged for the reinspection and a second reinspection 14+ days later. Then, if the violations persist, you will receive a citation.

Please see www.berkeleyfiresafe.org for more information.

Note that the Boynton Florida Neighborhood is in Area 3 on the map used for fire safety inspections.

North Berkeley Hills Firewise

BFN, together with Colorado Ave, Vermont Ave, Maryland Ave, and a few houses on Rugby Ave form a Firewise site called North Berkeley Hills Firewise Community. Firewise is a National Fire Protection Agency program that helps neighborhoods reduce wildfire risk through defensible space and home hardening.

A city-wide website for Firewise news and information is here. Our neighborhood Firewise site has a dedicated page here.

To join the ~20 BFN households that are active participants in Firewise, write to BFNFirewise@sonic.net. The only requirement is that you, or someone you hire, complete at least one hour per year of work that you probably do already, like raking leaves, trimming trees and plants, and cleaning gutters. There are no Firewise-specific inspections (just the usual inspections by Berkeley Fire Department).

Several insurance companies offer discounts to residents of Firewise communities. There are reports of insurance companies reversing a decision to cancel insurance when they learned that the house was in a Firewise community. Show this Firewise certificate to your insurer as proof of membership.

The Firewise group tracks our fire-safety work and reports it annually to Firewise. If you do fuel reduction or home hardening work (and haven't entered the information yourself on our tracker), fill out this form to report your fire mitigation work. You can use this form as many times as you need to. Alternately you can email BFNFirewise@sonic.net with the following information:

Date
Address
Contact Name
Description – this is work performed, i.e. cleaning gutters, raking leaves, trimming/removing trees, removing mulch, installing rock landscape, and home hardening upgrades such as installing gutter guards or wire mesh onto vents
Hours worked - any hours worked by you or someone you hired
Money spent - any money spent on materials or labor, including purchase or rental of equipment such as a chainsaw or drill.
If work performed included fire fuel removal (i.e., leaves, branches, mulch), note volume removed in cubic yards. The green bins are 0.5 cy (larger bin) or 0.33 cy (smaller bin).

Our Firewise three-year action plan

National Fire Protection Agency education site

Click here for a Firewise self-assessment checklist that you can use to make your home more fire-resistant. A Berkeley Fire Department checklist is here.

Community organizations

Berkeley FireSafe, and its previous incarnation Berkeley FireSafe Council, is a partnership between residents and the Berkeley Fire Department that is working to prevent the next catastrophic fire in Berkeley.

A major focus of Berkeley FireSafe is eucalyptus trees: “All trees will burn in an intense fire. But from a fire risk perspective the eucalyptus is far more hazardous than any other species. [...] The eucalyptus is the only fuel that can drive a catastrophic firestorm in Berkeley.” Information on the danger of eucalyptus trees from Berkeley FireSafe Council here and here.

Wildcat Watch is a fire-lookout group that uses a network of cameras to watch for fires in Tilden Park.

Recommendations for fire-safe landscaping

Convert your lawn to water-wise plants and save on your water bill. Learn irrigation water needs for >3,500 plant taxa used in California landscapes here.

Download a diagram that illustrates defensible space on a typical Berkeley-sized lot.

Insurance advice for living trusts

If your home is held in a living trust and the trust is not listed as an 'additional named insured' in your insurance policy, you could be denied coverage, as happened after the LA fires. For more information see here.