VIDEO/PHOTOS: With more than 800,000 acres burned across Idaho last year and a hot and dry spring this year, Boise’s wildfire captain says you should be taking steps to protect your home. “It is becoming more of a national problem as we have these bigger fires that are affecting more and more homes. Insurance companies are becoming more leery of insuring up in the urban interface, especially without some reassurances that people are doing mitigation and trying to protect their own stuff,” said Boise Fire Wildfire Captain Garrett Kirpach. Proper mitigation, Captain Kirpach says, can help firefighters save your home during a wildfire.
“It can make a ton of difference. Our fuel type here in Boise is mainly going to be cheatgrass with a sage component to it, so it moves very fast, very wind driven fires,” said Captain Kirpach. “So as firefighters, when we show up on scene, we typically don’t have a lot of time to change the fuel component here at the house so we kind of need things to be done when we show up. Otherwise, we’re just kind of incorporating all the vegetation and stuff into our plan for the house, versus where, if they’ve done the mitigation, we can do more of just getting the hose out and spraying water, versus truly having to do a bunch of work on the house itself to make it more defendable.”
