About: Joyce Statz

This fact sheet from the National Fire Protection Association describes best approaches for fencing and gives guidance on maintaining them.

This fact sheet from the National Fire Protection Association describes common practices and limitations of surface coatings for wildfire resistance.

This fact sheet from the National Fire Protection Association describes best practices for how to make attics and crawl spaces wildfire resistant.

This document describes the approach being taken by NWACA to address the wildfire risks that were identified in the February 2014 NWACA assessment. Individual neighborhood groups use this as a basis and as background for creating their own neighborhood-local CWPP.

This document explains the background for the NWACA Area Community Wildfire Assessment and how that assessment is to be used by individual communities within NWACA as they build Firewise Plans.

Form that can be used by Firewise Communities to track their time and expenses for hardening their homes and landscapes

The report completed by the Austin Fire Department and Texas Forest Service, which provides the baseline wildfire assessment for the NWACA area. This can be used as a reference for any smaller portion of NWACA when putting together their Firewise Community applications and their CWPP (Community Wildfire Protection Plan).

This map shows an overall wildfire risk index for the NWACA area. The index values are color coded, as shown on the map legend. They are a composite of three components of fire behavior in the wildland urban interface (WUI):

• vegetation hazard, based on density
• slope
• structure density of the area

As you can see from the temperature bar at the bottom of the map, about half of our neighborhood is at extreme or high risk in a wildfire event.

This map shows each of the residences in NWACA, color-coded for their risk in a fire situation, based on proximity to other residences. The risk might be from a wildfire or from a nearby house fire. See the legend at the bottom of the map.

In addition, the map has circled the primary evacuation points for this part of Austin - see the red circles. In case exit is not viable, there are temporary evacuation zones where residents might be able to shelter in place, shown with white stars - the area around Murchison Middle School and the Dell Jewish Community Center.