Who better to maintain your defensible space than wildland firefighters?
Maintaining defensible space is likely the most important thing you can do to protect your property before a wildfire occurs. Who better to help than professional wildland firefighters. Our expertise, gained from years of protecting values at risk from wildfires, makes us uniquely qualified to create defensible space. We are intimately familiar with NFPA’s Firewise USA standards and can manage your fuels accordingly. We can also clear fencelines and right-of-ways on ranch and farmland. If planning a prescribed fire and you need some “line punched in”, we can create hand firelines down to mineral soil with reduced fuels alongside to make your holding duties minimal on burn day. Whatever it is, give us a call and see what services we can offer. Western Fire Resources is most active around Canadian, Texas, but is capable of traveling for projects.
At-Cost Fuels Management Program for Texas Panhandle Communities
Texas Panhandle communities are no strangers to wildfire. From the East Amarillo Complex in 2006, to the Perryton Fire in 2017, to the Windy Deuce and Smokehouse Creek Fires in 2024, fires that quickly burn 100,000+ acres or more in a single burning period are common. In fact, the Smokehouse Creek Fire burned more acres than any other single fire in the lower 48 since 1910, and it burned these acres in just over 30 hours.
When these fires happen, communities are quickly put at risk. Often, it is unsafe to evacuate citizens, as they would just be putting themselves into the fuels that will soon be burning. City and County officials are often faced with the decision on whether there is enough time for evacuation or whether it would be more prudent to have citizens shelter in place. These decisions are often made with outdated or conflicting information on the location of the fire relative to a community.
Ultimately, the best way to protect property from fire is to create defensible space. While that looks different for an individual property than it does for a whole community, methods and tactics are similar. Being prepared is the first step in the Prepare, Leave Early, or Stay and Defend strategy used effectively in Australia and in select communities in the United States. While, individually, this is an important preparedness strategy, being prepared as a community is also important. It can reduce the chances fire will impact structures in town. It can give local first responders a tactical advantage over the fire in terms of behavior. And, it can help city and county officials by increasing the time wedge for decision making that quickly narrows as a fire approaches town.
Western Fire Resources is excited to announce our At-Cost Fuels Management Program for Texas Panhandle communities. Using what we have learned through our close relationship with the City of Borger’s Adobe Walls Fire Module and their extremely successful fuels mitigation program, our firefighters will assist local communities in meeting their fuels management goals and Western Fire will only bill for actual payroll, travel, equipment, and supply costs as a way to serve our community and to provide off-season work for our employees. Treatments may include clearing brush with chainsaws, cutting presuppression lines with hand tools where locally-owned heavy equipment cannot operate, piling cut brush for future burning, prepping broadcast prescribed fire units, and supplementing the local jurisdiction with our firefighters and engines should they wish to conduct any fuels mitigation prescribed fires.
Contact us at [email protected] for a free evaluation of wildland fuels in and around your community, and an estimate on what it would cost to meet your fuels management goals.