As we experience hotter and drier summers in Western Washington, more people are thinking about how to reduce the ignition potential on their properties. If you expect responders to defend your home in a fire, it must be defensible. Thurston Conservation District supports the programs, Wildfire Ready Neighbors (WRN) and Firewise USA®, which assist homeowners and renters in identifying risks on their property and in their community and offers actions to protect your home before a fire event occurs.
Wildfire Ready Neighbors
In 2023, Wildfire Ready Neighbors, a statewide program developed by the Department of Natural Resources (DNR), launched in Thurston County. Since then, hundreds of homeowners have received their free home wildfire risk assessment and have completed actions on their property to reduce their risk of ignition. Through WRN, our wildfire mitigation specialists will provide you with actions you can take to create a more defensible space around your home.
Wildfire preparedness isn’t one-size-fits-all. That’s why DNR developed a simple survey to help your local wildfire experts craft a Wildfire Ready Plan just for you that works for your property, budget, and lifestyle.
How to get started:
Follow the link below to be directed to the Department of Natural Resource’s Wildfire Ready Neighbor’s webpage. From there, you can sign up for a FREE home wildfire risk assessment. Once you’ve signed up, a wildfire mitigation expert will contact you to schedule your assessment.
Firewise USA®
The national Firewise USA® recognition program provides a collaborative framework to help neighbors in an area get organized, find direction, and take action to increase the ignition resistance of their homes and community and to reduce wildfire risks at the local level.
1. Organize: Form a board or committee with a minimum of two people. This can be an HOA or it can be you and your neighbor, but Firewise USA® requires a minimum of 8 dwelling units within a specified boundary to quality as a site. Identify a resident leader, who will be the main point of contact.
2. Create a plan: You will receive a Community Wildfire Risk Assessment from a wildfire mitigation expert. This will outline risk factors as well as actions you can take to lower your site’s ignition potential. Then, it’s time to create your three-year Action Plan. Using the Risk Assessment Report, your community will create attainable actions and goals for your site to complete.
Every three years, you will need to update your Action Plan.
Every five years, a wildfire mitigation expert will conduct a Community Wildfire Risk Assessment and present their findings to the board or committee.
3. Take action: Complete one educational or mitigation action from the Action Plan each year. This can be a fall/spring cleanup, a fuels reduction chipping event, or an educational event/workshop. At a minimum, each site is required to annually invest the equivalent of one volunteer hour per dwelling unit in wildfire risk reduction actions. If your site has identified 100 homes within its boundary, then 100 hours of work or the monetary equivalent, based on the independent sector value of volunteer time, needs to be completed for that year.
4. Tell us about it! Report your accomplishments through the Firewise USA® portal.
Firewise USA® is a national recognition program designed to empower communities to create defensible, ignition resistance spaces by providing free technical and financial assistance. During the application process, a community’s vulnerabilities are identified by wildfire mitigation experts during a Risk Assessment and then prioritized by importance by the Community Board. Those vulnerabilities are addressed in a 3-year Action Plan, a document full of deliverable actions that a community has deemed necessary based on the results the Risk Assessment. The available microgrants are intended to reimburse your site for the expenses associated with the actions in your Plan.
Wildfire Ready Neighbors and Firewise USA® were both created to help community members design defensible spaces on their properties. However, there are critical differences between the two programs. Take a look at the table below to determine which is right for you.
| Wildfire Ready Neighbors | Firewise USA® | |
| Provides customized actions to reduce a property’s ignition potential | ✓ | ✓ |
| Designed for communities to organize and act together to reduce ignition potential at a community-wide scale | X | ✓ |
| A national recognition program with an annual renewal process | X | ✓ |
| Microgrants available | X | ✓ |
Folks who are interested in increasing their community resilience often start with their own property through Wildfire Ready Neighbors. If you have any questions about our community resilience programs, please contact Jae Townsend, jtownsend@thurstoncd.com.
Browse through this guide to fire-resistant plants, a publication of PNW Extension.
Check out our resources page for additional information on emergency preparedness and natural disasters.
TCD’s participation in Firewise USA® and Wildfire Ready Neighbors is supported with funding from Washington’s Climate Commitment Act. The CCA supports Washington’s climate action efforts by putting cap-and-invest dollars to work reducing climate pollution, creating jobs, and improving public health. Information about the CCA is available at www.climate.wa.gov.
Interested in learning more about Wildfire Ready Neighbors or Firewise USA®?
Jae Townsend
Community Resilience Coordinator
jtownsend@thurstoncd.com
You can also use our contact form.