USFS Angora report Aug. 3

NEWS ADVISORY
Date: August 3, 2007

ANGORA FIRE FUELS TREATMENT ASSESSMENT REPORT NOW ON LINE

Below is the link to the Angora Fuels Assessment report.

The report is being widely distributed to media, elected officials,
interest groups, and internal audiences. The report draws some
interesting conclusions, particularly that many of the homes burned because of embers from other burning homes, rather than directly from the wildfire. The report also notes that prescribed fire and thinning successfully reduced fire behavior from crown fires to surface fires.

The first is that the report shows that we need both thinning in the forest and defensible space by home owners in order to effectively protect communities in the wildland interface. Thinning or defensible space alone is not enough. The second message we are emphasizing is firefighter safety during structure protection. Page 7 of the report gives an example of a house that had firewood stacked against it and was at the edge of a
steep hill when it caught on fire. The report notes that approaching the house would have been unsafe for firefighters due to the intense heat. The report goes on to mention that firefighters successfully defended the remaining houses in that subdivision.

The report can be found at:
http://www.fs.fed.us/r5/angorafuelsassessment