How to prevent wildfires from reaching your house

"Preventing wildfires" usually means two very different things: stopping ignitions in the wildland (the job of utilities, land managers, careful campers, and weather), and stopping a wildland fire from igniting your home (your job). This guide is about the second one.

The first problem — wildland ignition prevention — is mostly a policy and behavior question: keep chains off the ground when towing, no fireworks during fire season, no mowing dry grass mid-afternoon on a windy day, report sparking power lines, follow burn-day restrictions. Important, but largely outside any single homeowner's control.

The second problem — keeping your house from igniting once a fire is in the neighborhood — is entirely within your control, and post-fire forensic data shows it's the question that decides whether you have a home next month.

Direct flame contact: a continuous fuel path (dry grass, shrubs, wood fence, attached deck) leads flame right to the wall. Solved by defensible space and a noncombustible Zone 0.

Radiant heat: a large nearby fuel (a tree, a neighbor's wood deck, a parked RV) heats your siding or window to ignition without ever touching it. Solved by spacing, tempered glass, and noncombustible siding.

Embers: 60–90% of home losses in modern post-fire investigations. Wind-blown embers travel up to a mile and land on roofs, in gutters, against siding, and through vents. Solved by hardening every opening, clearing every horizontal surface, and removing fuel from the 5-foot perimeter.

Embers need fuel to ignite something. Remove the fuel — the bark mulch, the dry leaves in the gutter, the cardboard box in the attic — and the ember dies harmlessly. Almost every successful wildfire defense in modern post-fire studies is a story about removed fuel, not about adding new equipment.

On the roof: Class A covering plus clean gutters means embers land on a non-fuel and burn out within seconds.

At the vents: 1/8-inch mesh or a WUI-listed ember-resistant vent means embers can't get inside to find insulation, stored boxes, or framing.

At the walls: noncombustible Zone 0 means an ember on the ground next to your house lands on gravel, not bark mulch — and dies before it can ignite anything.

Under decks and stairs: screening with 1/8-inch mesh and removing stored material denies embers the cool, dark, fuel-rich environment they love most.

Move patio cushions, doormats, firewood, and propane tanks (if portable) away from the house and to a noncombustible area.

Close all windows, pet doors, and skylights. Shut interior doors to slow internal spread if embers do get in.

Roll up garden hoses and confirm any spigot has a working hose attached for last-minute spot defense — but never plan to stay and fight a wildfire with a garden hose.

Charge phones and portable batteries. Fill cars with gas. Pack go-bags. Know two evacuation routes — one may be blocked.

Sign up for your county's emergency alerts (Nixle, WEA, or local equivalent). Most evacuation warnings come through these channels first.

Hardening buys time and increases survival odds; it does not replace leaving. People die in wildfires. Houses survive much better than the people inside them.

IBHS's post-fire investigations following the 2017 Tubbs, 2018 Camp, and 2020 Glass fires found that hardened homes — those with Class A roofs, ember-resistant vents, dual-pane windows, and clean Zone 0 perimeters — survived at dramatically higher rates than nearby unhardened homes, even on the same street.

The forensic pattern is clear: the difference between a destroyed and surviving home in a wildfire-impacted neighborhood is almost never lot size, distance from the wildland, or sprinklers. It is roof rating, vent screening, Zone 0 condition, and gutter cleanliness — every single time.

Use a structured checklist — run a free FireScores scan, or work through our 29-point home hardening checklist guide. The point of a checklist is to make sure you don't accidentally skip the one item that ends up mattering.

Start with the cheapest, highest-impact items: clean gutters, walk Zone 0, replace 1/4-inch vent mesh. Schedule the medium-cost items (ember-resistant vents, dual-pane windows on the wildland side) over a season. Save the big items (Class A re-roof, noncombustible siding) for the natural replacement cycle.