Is Your Property Prepared for Wildfire Season? A Guide to Creating Defensible Space in Missouri and Oklahoma
As we head into the peak of summer's heat here in Missouri and Oklahoma, the risk of wildfire becomes a serious concern for anyone living in a rural or wooded area. You can’t control the weather, but you can control your property. Creating a "defensible space" around your home is the single most effective action you can take to protect your family and give firefighters a chance to save your property.
This guide explains how to create that crucial buffer zone.
What is Defensible Space?
Defensible space is a buffer you create between your home and the flammable grass, trees, and brush surrounding it. It’s designed to slow or stop the spread of wildfire and protect your house from catching fire—either from direct flame contact or radiant heat. It involves three zones.
Zone 1: The Immediate Zone (0-5 feet from your home)
This is the most critical area. It should be a "no-burn" zone.
Action: Remove all flammable materials. This includes dead leaves, pine needles from roofs and gutters, and flammable shrubs or wood mulch piled against the siding.
Tip: Use non-flammable materials like rock, gravel, or concrete for landscaping in this immediate zone.
Zone 2: The Intermediate Zone (5-30 feet)
This is where you create a break in the fire's fuel. The goal is to create space so fire can't easily jump from tree to tree or climb from the ground into the canopy.
Action: Thin out trees to create adequate spacing. Remove "ladder fuels" by trimming tree branches up to 6-10 feet from the ground. Clear out dense, flammable undergrowth and brush.
Solution: This is where professional help is most effective. Manually clearing this much land is a monumental task. Forestry mulching is the ideal solution, as it instantly clears the flammable underbrush and turns it into a low-risk, moisture-retaining layer of mulch.
Zone 3: The Extended Zone (30-100 feet)
The goal here isn't to clear everything, but to interrupt the fire's path and slow it down.
Action: Continue to remove dense pockets of vegetation and highly flammable trees like invasive Eastern Redcedars. The goal is to break up the continuous line of fuel that a fire would follow toward your home.
Don't Wait Until You See Smoke
The time to prepare for a wildfire is now, not when one is approaching. Taking proactive steps to create defensible space gives your home its best chance of survival. Forestry mulching is the fastest, most effective way to accomplish the heavy lifting required for Zones 2 and 3.
Protect your home and family this fire season. Call Clear View Land Clearing today for a professional wildfire mitigation and defensible space assessment.