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<h1>Finding Wildfire Solutions</h1>
<h4>Although no single thing removes risk completely, there are solutions to help reduce risk.</h4>
<p>Solutions at the local, state, and federal levels are often more effective and cost-efficient than individual efforts, but each plays an important role in reducing physical and financial fire risks.</p>
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<h2 style="text-align: left;">Protecting your home</h2>
<p style="text-align: left;">How wildfire will impact a home depends on the vulnerability of that home to the fire’s intensity and embers that reach it. The slope of the property, and distance to potential wildfire locations determine a property&#8217;s risk from fire embers. The building materials such as the type of roof and siding, as well as the distance to fuel sources impact the building&#8217;s likelihood of igniting.</p>
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<h4>Explore individual solutions</h4>
<p>Structural options can help reduce vulnerability of the home to mitigate physical damage, or creating a zone of protection can help distance a property from fuel sources to reduce risk.</p>
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<article class="prose"><strong>Fire insurance</strong><br />
One way to offset the cost of wildfire damage is to invest in fire insurance, which can help reduce your financial risk and allow you to recover more quickly after a fire. Most homeowners insurance typically includes fire coverage but in some areas, this will need to be purchased separately.</article>


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<h2 style="text-align: left;">Protecting your business</h2>
<p style="text-align: left;">Extreme wildfire events don’t need to be disasters. As a commercial business owner, understanding your wildfire risk is critical to success. Now that you’ve begun this resilience journey to explore the natural hazards that impact your property or your portfolio of buildings, it’s time to think about what strategies you can implement to mitigate your risk.</p>
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<h3>Explore business solutions</h3>
<h4>Protect your assets.</h4>
<p>Identify vulnerabilities in your buildings and make changes to harden these components. For mitigating the impacts of wildfire, you might upgrade the HVAC system to handle increased particulate matter from smoke, upgrade roof equipment to prevent the entry of embers, and ensure that no shrubs or trees are close to the building.</p>
<h4>Redundancy saves time.</h4>
<p>During major wildfire events, disruptions to critical lifelines can last from several hours to multiple days. Direct damage to equipment on site, like an exterior transformer or storage tank, can also disrupt power or water. If your operations depend on continuous power, water, or gas supply, do you have back-up systems in place to see you through utility disruptions? Redundancy in critical systems can help minimize downtime, especially during utility outages.</p>
<h4>Preparedness is key.</h4>
<p>Developing a wildfire recovery plan can help you take immediate action and reduce the impact of wildfire events on your business. Back-up your data using a cloud-based service, store a redundant supply of critical inventory off-site, and gameplan “what-if” scenarios that outline what actions you might take if they were to happen. Damage to buildings can take weeks to months to repair, but many delays may impede your ability to start these repairs, like securing funding or hiring contractors. These impending delays can more than double your total downtime, but you can reduce this downtime through preparation: set aside emergency funds so that work can start while you wait for insurance payouts and pre-identify and possibly retain contractors that could do the repair work. Save yourself time later by preparing now.</p>
<h4>Take action to propel your resilience strategy and reduce your risk with confidence.</h4>
<p>For portfolios large and small, it can be daunting to navigate next steps, including which mitigation options work best and how to prioritize upgrades across your portfolio to make the most of your limited budget. The resilience consultants and engineers at Arup can help advise your organization and customize your path forward to make your business more resilient in the face of natural hazards. Explore more solutions with Arup’s IRIS tool <a href="https://www.arup.com/multi-hazard-risk-and-resilience-consulting-for-risk-factor-pro-customers">here</a>.</p>
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<h2 style="text-align: left;">Protecting your community</h2>
<p style="text-align: left;">Effective wildfire risk management is collaborative, future-facing, and considers local needs. Even if some homes have been built to fire standards or retrofitted, if nearby homes have not, the entire neighborhood could remain vulnerable. Understanding how wildfires begin and how they spread and your area risks can also help you better protect your property from nearby risks and damage.</p>
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<h3>Explore community solutions</h3>
<p>The below are key things that make areas vulnerable to wildfire and solutions for communities to help reduce the risk.</p>
<h4>Vegetation and fuel sources</h4>
<p>The type of fuels sourcing a fire can have an impact on how intense it can get and how quickly it can spread. While dry grass can catch fire and spread quickly with high winds, extremely intense fires tend to build more in dry dense vegetation areas where</p>
<p><strong>Reduce nearby fuels</strong><br />
Controlled burning, also known as prescribed burning, involves setting planned fires to maintain the health of a forest and reduce hazardous fuel loads near developed areas.</p>
<h4>Possible ignition locations</h4>
<p>Fire Factor takes into account fire risks from electric transmission lines and also uses historic data to determine where human-caused fires are more likely, and areas prone to lightning strikes.</p>
<p><strong>Alert community to reduce ignitions</strong><br />
Nationally, nearly 9 out of 10 wildfires are caused by humans. The main causes of human-ignited wildfires are campfires left unattended, debris burning, hot ashes and BBQ coals, and vehicles or equipment that throw sparks. Communications campaigns and signs in areas prone to wildfires can help drive awareness of the risks.</p>
<h4>Topography and weather</h4>
<p>Topography refers to the surface features of land. It includes the mountains, hills, creeks, and other bumps. After a fire begins, the topography of the land and the weather work together to determine how far and fast fires spread. Fires generally climb uphill and more intense winds can spread a fire more quickly and carry embers further.</p>
<p><strong>Set appropriate building standards</strong><br />
Zoning restrictions, such as restricting development in steep slope areas, regulations, and building codes can help communities grow and develop with wildfire in mind.</p>
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<h2>Being prepared can bring peace of mind</h2>
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<h3>Why are fire risks increasing?</h3>
<p>A changing environment means higher temperatures and a drier atmosphere, creating conditions which are prime for wildfires to spread.</article>
