The national Firewise USA recognition program provides a collaborative framework to help neighbors in a geographic area get organized, find direction, and take action to increase the ignition resistance of their homes and community and to reduce wildfire risk.
As Oak Park moves forward with its Firewise Program, we stand on the shoulders of many other communities who have adopted Firewise to increase their fire resiliency. The National Fire Protection Association (NFPA) developed the program, and in 2019 started a new journey with seven active Firewise USA sites spread across the country, challenging them to improve their resilience to wildfire. The two-year pilot program, Sites of Excellence, was designed to increase participation in active wildfire risk reduction through a focused approach.
Its goals:
- To have 100% participation of homes within the designated pilot boundary, each of which contained up to 100 co-located homes.
- To complete identified mitigation tasks within 30 feet of every home, based on recommendations from individual assessments.
Through 2019 and 2020 these sites worked to change how they engage with their community members to increase the amount of meaningful risk reduction work being done to the structures and home ignition zone. At the end of the two years, these communities showed that big goals are achievable with a focused approach.
In Oak Park, we are just at the beginning of this journey, but many of the learnings from these sites will help to accelerate our successful adoption of Firewise.
The NFPA web page link below provides an interactive story map that shares the stories of these communities and how they successfully implemented the Firewise program.
