The most important things you can do to protect your family and your home from wildfire are:

• Create defensible space around your home (click for guidelines)
• Support the Gold Hill Fire Department and fundraising efforts for CWPP projects (see below)
• If a wildfire occurs, obey evacuation orders!

Gold Hill lies within what is termed the “wildland-urban interface,” or WUI (pronounced WOO-ee). This means our homes border lands with undeveloped wildland or vegetative fuels (i.e.trees/shrubs/grasses that will burn). Communities and residents within the WUI face substantial risk to life, property, and infrastructure. Wildland fire within the WUI is one of the most dangerous and complicated situations firefighters face. The Gold Hill Fire Protection District (GHFPD) has created a Community Wildfire Protection Plan (CWPP) to help us understand and plan for the wildfire risks we face. The CWPP prioritizes areas within the fire district to receive fuels reduction treatments, recommends measures to reduce structural ignitability, and recommends ways to improve emergency preparedness. The CWPP was completed in December 2006, and can be viewed and/or downloaded at http://www.goldhillfire.org/cwpp.