Glo Smith and her husband bought their property in Twin Pines 14 years ago. It has one of those breath-taking western views, looking down on the pass and across to San Gorgonio. This October it was also directly in the path of the Esperanza Fire as it burned upward from Cabazon.

When Glo bought the property, her husband wanted to prune all the trees to reduce the fire hazard. She thought this was a terribly unnatural thing to do to trees and stopped him. Two years later a fire started in the brush below and burned towards their property. CDF put it out before it got too close, but it changed Glo's views about what is natural and the threat of fire. From that moment on she became committed to protecting her home through fuel abatement. Every year since then she budgeted household money to spend on clearing brush and creating small fire breaks on the large slopes below her house. Year by year she thinned the brush, pruned the trees, and made the property more defensible. This past spring she made a major push in having a contractor remove fuel on a particularly overgrown slope east of the house, right in the path of the fire to come in October.

Like many others in Twin Pines, Glo and her husband, along with their pets, left their home when the fire was obviously coming their way. The signal to leave was an exploding propane tank from a home below. They returned to find their property essentially untouched. Fire had burned up to the property lines where her abatement had begun, and without enough fuel to continue its path, burned around both sides of her property. Live Oak and Manzanita clusters that at first glance seemed certain to burn did not. Trees were scorched by the intense heat as the fire front came close, but they did not burn. Evidently the combination of fire breaks, pruning, and the removal of ground fuel had worked. It should be noted there was no fire retardant or water dropped on her land, and fire fighters did not make a stand there. It seems clear that Glo's abatement efforts over the years had effectively turned the fire away from her property.

We are apt to stop thinking about fire after it gets cold and there is snow on the ground, but winter has many days that are excellent for abatement work. The days that won't allow physical work do allow for planning. If you need abatement work done, now is a good time to start, and you can do so by calling the Fire Safe Council at 659-6208.

A seasonal note—chimney fires are a common and dangerous occurrence in the winter. They happen from a buildup of creosote in the flue, mostly from burning unseasoned wood, or from burning manufactured logs. These fires don't always set the house on fire, but they often weaken the structural integrity of the chimney, which sets the stage for a future fire. A professional can alert you to damage you might not know about. To protect against a fire, have your chimney inspected and cleaned by professionals on a regular basis—yearly if you just burn wood, quarterly if you burn manufactured logs.

Mike Esnard, MCFSC President