Ready for the wildfire season?

Utah is famous for its beautiful summers, its bone-dry air and with that, fire danger is never far away. 

The other day, we received a brochure from our municipality asking us to prepare ourselves against a looming fire season. It’s true that our block is saturated with trees, of which too many of them are sap saturated evergreens, some of them “standing dead”, a clear and present fire danger. 

When we built our home (blue dot on the photo below) over ten years ago, we only had to plant two trees in the front (that were both eaten up last year by the deer), the rest was already planted, alongside our adjacent neighbors’ properties, encroaching upon ours in many instances. 

Over the years, landscaping companies have been selling far too many trees in too many species (many not adapted to our climate) and planted them far too densely and close to homes, forgetting - no probably ignoring - that trees eventually grow big and tall and here we are, three decades later. in the middle of an urban forest which has become a tinderbox! 

In fact our main problem is not our home, it’s the neighbors’ trees that are choking us, and this is why we requested an assessment of our fire danger by an official from the City who will have to look outside of our own property for effective solutions! We’ll let you know what comes out of that visit...