Last Monday I was on the phone and saw a puff of smoke go by my window. I hung up on my caller and ran down the stairs, yelling at my wife to call 911.

A fire had started on the road below my house, about 100 yards down the hill. When I got out, and looked down at the fire it was about 10 feet in dia and the flames were about 10 feet high. Winds were blowing 30mph, and I knew things were going to get ugly, real quick.

I rolled out my 3/4″ hose on my yard hydrants and quickly realized that a 3/4″ stream of water wasn’t going to do squat.

Fortunately for me, the direction of the wind made the fire pass within 100 feet of my house. I burned 3 acres and if the fire trucks hadn’t had showed up when they did, you would have heard about a 3000 acre fire in Truckee.

My point is you can be as anal as you want about defensible space, but when you actually see a 30 foot wall of flames rushing towards you, a lot of things goes through your head like, ” I should’a…”

I came away from this realizing a 30 foot defensible space isn’t enough. It’s better than nothing, but it isn’t enough. I have a 100′ defensible space which will soon be 150′. Another thing that people with wells and back up power supplies ought to think of is sprinklers on the roof. My wife asked me “what happens if this happens again and you aren’t here?” Good question. I did an internet search for rooftop sprinklers and saw enough that I realized that is my next project after pushing out the defensible space.

I have re-prioritized my project list this summer and it has everything to do with wildland fire. I was fortunate enough to see it up front and personal and walk away from it, seeing it as a very valuable lesson.

Now’s the time to work on this stuff because when it is happening, it is too late.