Wildfire safety starts well before flames are visible. The decisions you make in the days, hours, and minutes before a fire reaches your area determine your outcome more than anything you do in the moment. Here’s how to prepare your home, protect your health, and get out safely.
Create Defensible Space Around Your Home
The land immediately surrounding your house is your first line of defense. CAL FIRE breaks defensible space into three zones, each with a specific job.
Zone 0 covers the first five feet from your home and is the most critical. This area should be completely free of combustible materials: no mulch, no dead leaves, no firewood stacks, no plastic patio furniture. Use hardscape like gravel, stone, or concrete instead. Zone 1 extends out to 30 feet. Keep grass mowed short, prune tree branches so they’re at least six feet off the ground, and space shrubs apart so fire can’t jump between them. Zone 2 reaches out to 100 feet. Thin dense vegetation, remove dead trees and brush, and create breaks in continuous plant cover so flames lose momentum before reaching your inner zones.
These zones won’t make your home fireproof, but they give firefighters something to work with. A home with good defensible space is far more likely to survive even if a crew can’t reach it in time.
Pack a Go Bag Before Fire Season
Your evacuation kit should be packed, zipped, and sitting by the door before any fire is reported. When an evacuation order hits, you may have minutes, not hours.
- Water: One gallon per person per day for at least three days, for both drinking and sanitation.
- Food: A several-day supply of non-perishable items plus a manual can opener.
- Communication: A battery-powered or hand-crank NOAA weather radio, a cell phone with chargers, and a backup battery pack.
- Safety gear: Flashlight, extra batteries, first aid kit, dust masks, and a whistle to signal for help.
- Documents: Copies of insurance policies, IDs, and bank records stored electronically or in a waterproof container.
- Utilities: A wrench or pliers to shut off gas and water lines.
- Navigation: Local paper maps, since cell service often fails during large fires.
For pets, keep a separate kit with several days of food in a waterproof container, a water bowl and water supply, medications, and a sturdy carrier for each animal. If your pet isn’t used to a crate, start leaving it out with treats and a familiar blanket inside so they’re comfortable entering it under stress.
Know the Difference Between Warnings and Orders
An evacuation warning means danger is approaching your area. It’s not a suggestion to start thinking about leaving. It means you should assume an order is coming and begin loading your vehicle immediately. Anyone who needs extra time to evacuate, including people with mobility challenges, families with young children, and those with large animals, should leave as soon as a warning is issued.
An evacuation order means there is an immediate threat to your life and you need to go right now. At this point, there’s no time to gather belongings. Follow the routes specified by law enforcement, even if you think you know a faster way. Alternate routes may be cut off by fire or congested with other evacuees.
Protect Your Lungs From Smoke
Wildfire smoke carries fine particles small enough to pass through your nose and throat and settle deep in your lungs. The Air Quality Index (AQI) is your guide to how dangerous the air is. At 100 or below, conditions are generally satisfactory. Between 101 and 150, people with asthma, heart disease, or lung conditions are at risk. Above 150, everyone faces health effects, including healthy adults.
When smoke rolls in, stay indoors with windows and doors closed. If you have a central HVAC system, set it to recirculate so it’s not pulling in outside air. A portable air purifier with a HEPA filter makes a real difference. Look for one with a Clean Air Delivery Rate (CADR) that matches the square footage of the room you’re using it in.
If you don’t have a commercial purifier, a DIY option works surprisingly well. A box fan taped to a single MERV-13 filter produces a CADR of about 111. A Corsi-Rosenthal box, made from four MERV-13 filters taped into a cube with a box fan on top, reaches a CADR around 400, enough to clean the air in a large living room.
Choosing the Right Mask
If you need to go outside during smoky conditions, an N95 respirator filters 95% of airborne particles and is sufficient when you’re away from the burn area. A P100 filter captures 99.97% of particles and is the better choice if you’re near active fire, visible ash, or soot. The “P” rating also means the filter resists oil-based particles, which matters because wildfire smoke contains oily compounds from burned structures and vegetation.
Any mask only works if it seals against your face. Perform a quick seal check every time you put one on: cup your hands over the mask, exhale sharply, and feel for air leaking around the edges. Facial hair that crosses the seal line will let contaminated air bypass the filter entirely.
If You’re Trapped in a Vehicle
Sometimes fire moves faster than traffic. If flames overtake the road and you cannot drive through safely, your vehicle is still better shelter than being on foot. Park in a cleared area away from dense vegetation. Roll all windows up completely, close all vents, and set the air system to recirculate.
Smoke will still seep into the cab even with windows tightly closed, so cover your nose and mouth with a mask or wet cloth. Stay low, below the window line, to reduce radiant heat exposure. Avoid parking on steep slopes. Research from the U.S. Forest Service found that fire traveling uphill can pass over and under a vehicle simultaneously, creating a heat eddy on the downhill side that eliminates the protection the vehicle would otherwise provide. A flat spot or a road cut into a slope is significantly safer.
Stay in the vehicle until the main fire front passes. The most intense heat typically lasts only a few minutes before conditions become survivable enough to move.
Returning Home After the Fire
The danger doesn’t end when flames are out. Residential fire ash contains hazardous materials that were locked inside building components before they burned: asbestos from insulation, tiles, and siding; lead from old paint, batteries, electronics, and ceramics; and a range of toxic compounds bound up in soot and dust. This ash looks harmless but is genuinely dangerous to inhale or touch with bare skin.
Before you handle any debris, gear up properly. At minimum, you need an N95 respirator, though a P100 with a multi-gas cartridge is better for filtering both particles and chemical vapors released from burned materials. Wear chemical-resistant gloves, safety goggles (not just glasses), long sleeves, and boots. Full-body coveralls like Tyvek suits prevent ash from contacting your skin, hair, and clothing.
Don’t let children or pets onto the property until ash has been cleared. Avoid sweeping or blowing ash, which sends particles airborne. Wet it down gently before scooping it into heavy bags. If your home is standing but was surrounded by fire, have your water tested before drinking it. Heat can damage water lines and allow contaminants to leach into the supply, even in municipal systems.