Appendix C — COMMUNITY WILDLAND-URBAN INTERFACE (WUI) FIRE HAZARD EVALUATION FRAMEWORK

This appendix is for informational purposes and is not intended for adoption.

User notes:

About this appendix: Wildland-urban interface (WUI) fire spread has significant impact on communities well beyond the loss of structures, including community evacuation and incident response. Prefire planning and hazard mitigation impact how the fire develops, how the life safety of residents and first responders is impacted during evacuations, and the extent of structural and infrastructure losses. There is a need to document prefire hazard in a way that assesses the fire impact beyond potential structural losses.

This appendix contains a preliminary Community WUI Fire Hazard Evaluation Framework as a suggested methodology to begin to support communities at risk in the identification of their unique hazards and to provide common metrics for comparisons between communities. This preliminary framework includes information on community size, population and fuels; on notification and evacuation; and on the community infrastructure and firefighting response potential. Aspects of this framework may already be included in various community-level documents, such as Community Wildfire Protection Plans or evacuation plans. Development of a standard framework will (1) consolidate relevant WUI fire hazard and planning information in one place, and (2) allow for cross-community comparisons.

The evaluation required to implement this framework will support prefire hazard assessment and during-fire response operations. An increased understanding of fire evacuation, fire structural response and fire defensive action relationships is needed to assess the overall community WUI fire hazard. The quantification of these relationships will enable communities to optimize the community-level response to WUI fire hazards in a more integrated approach and result in increased life safety and reduced losses.