I'd love to see a source for these statements, because it directly contradicts what I've seen in the Fire Smart BC (https://firesmartbc.ca/) materials.
I won't claim to be an expert, but am a local volunteer firefighter who has gone through some wildfire training. Forest fires create their own weather, including winds that drive burning embers ahead of the blaze, raining firebrands all over everything. Having numerous houses between the fire and your place just means the firefighters are already busy. The response to this is a combination of building material selection and landscaping.
Basically, you want to keep a 10m zone around your house as free of flammable materials as possible, and try to thin things out beyond this priority zone. Don't use bark mulch in the flower beds beside the house, and don't run that wooden fence right up to the house. Clean your eaves troughs of dead leaves. Wherever leaves and junk collect from the wind, burning embers will too.
A department colleague used to fly fire suppression missions all summer long. He was able to spot the fire-smart places easily, because the massive fires appeared to "go around", and the homes were still there.
> Having numerous houses between the fire and your place just means the firefighters are already busy. The response to this is a combination of building material selection and landscaping.
I generally agree with everything you stated, I think we're just talking about different scales. Instead of several houses, I was talking about having several subdivisions ("500 houses") between your house and the open space.
It has happened, but it is not the average fire that starts in an open space and burns through several subdivisions. Structure protection is often the highest priority in those cases and the fire doesn't usually get too deep into a subdivision. When that does happen, there is almost no prep you could have done to save your house, because as you mentioned, the natural forces that create that kind of situation are virtually unstoppable -- as we recently saw in Colorado (Marshall), or California in 2018 (Woolsey), and Ft McMurray in 2016.
My point was, for your average fire that can be fought with enough water/phos-chek/etc, being as far away from that open space is your best protection. That's obvious to us now, but I didn't think about it when I first moved to California, so I wanted to put that on OP's radar.
I won't claim to be an expert, but am a local volunteer firefighter who has gone through some wildfire training. Forest fires create their own weather, including winds that drive burning embers ahead of the blaze, raining firebrands all over everything. Having numerous houses between the fire and your place just means the firefighters are already busy. The response to this is a combination of building material selection and landscaping.
Basically, you want to keep a 10m zone around your house as free of flammable materials as possible, and try to thin things out beyond this priority zone. Don't use bark mulch in the flower beds beside the house, and don't run that wooden fence right up to the house. Clean your eaves troughs of dead leaves. Wherever leaves and junk collect from the wind, burning embers will too.
I also have a couple of these mounted at the peak ends at my roof, with hoses I can connect and leave if needed: https://waspwildfire.com/products/gutter-mount-sprinkler-sys...
A department colleague used to fly fire suppression missions all summer long. He was able to spot the fire-smart places easily, because the massive fires appeared to "go around", and the homes were still there.