The irony is that many areas have completely idiotic brush clearance regulations that promote fire. For some reason most jurisdictions give the authority over these regulations to the fire authority, who rarely has any understanding of botany or forestry. All they know is that bushes and trees burn so if you cut them down there's nothing to burn. The problem is that doing so reduces competition for soil moisture, allows more sunlight to reach the ground, and destroys soil microorganisms. All of these are a recipe for invasive annual grasses and weeds which promote fire. They also usually don't make any distinction between plants and trees that are more fire resistant and ones that aren't.
The real issue is that in real life you can almost never have your cake and eat it too. The measures that can make your home more defensible against a major forest/brush fire are the same measures than can make it more likely that a forest/brush fire will be ignited. By promoting weeds and annual grasses you create flash fuels and ladder fuels that increase the likelihood of ignition and enable rapid ground spread to nearby forest/brush.
That's a good point. The transition from climax condition shaded surface to open area promotes light, flashy fuels. Eliminating ladder fuels and keeping fire on the ground makes sense, but those treatments require continual maintenance.
They also usually don't make any distinction between plants and trees that are more fire resistant and ones that aren't.
The divorcing of fire services from forestry services was a huge mistake.
An example around here is a large plant called a laurel sumac. It has a reputation for going off like a roman candle in a brush fire. The irony is that it's actually a fire-resistant plant on account of that it stays green all year long even in the worst drought. No one seemed to have looked into why they explode into fireballs in a brush fire. This particular plants is evergreen, but it drops a lot of leaves all year round. After 30 years there's a huge bed of dry leaves under them, which does ignite like throwing pine needles on a fire. When the conflagration passes the plant is burnt to a crisp, hence the reputation. If the leaves are cleared out and the plant limbed up a little bit it shades the ground, prevents undergrowth by allelopathy, and will not ignite when exposed to embers. The fire regulations require them to be cut down.
I would personally feel more comfortable with 300 feet of these plants around my home than 300 feet of bare ground that will be all kinds of flash fuels a month after a rain.
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