Imagine that you are a raging wildfire, looking for things to consume.

Up ahead you see some mouthwatering homes. You throw some embers at them to see what you might catch. One lands in some tasty dry mulch. You munch along that and to a delicious wooden fence. Gleefully gulping your way along the fence, you run right up to a whole house. Dinner is served!

Still hungry, you try for another home. It too has a fence, but, sadly, there’s a wide cement walkway between the fence and the house. And there’s no vegetation anywhere around the house for you to snack on. There aren’t even any dried leaves or pine needles on the roof. There’s just no way you can get close enough to get a decent mouthful.

Guess you’ll just have to settle for the first one.

The news media delights in showing us pictures of one home left unscathed when everything around it has been destroyed by wildfire. Such as the famous red-roofed house of Lahaina.

We are amazed and think, “How lucky!” But it is not just luck. By blocking all the paths that fire can use to reach your home, you can change the odds of it being burned. A lot.

Look around you. What potential fire paths do you see?

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For more insights on how you can keep wildfires from reaching and igniting your home:

• Change the odds, save your house
• Here’s a video about how Your Home Can Survive a Wildfire
• Here’s a checklist of things you can do to Prepare Your Home – UCANR Fire Network