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Northwest Austin is a little safer from wildfire. Members of the Northwest Austin Civic Association (NWACA), including Austin City Council member Marc Duchen, convened May 16 to clear flammable brush from the Barrow Nature Preserve, a wooded ravine near the Bull Creek neighborhood.
The decision to organize the volunteer cleanup came as NWACA leaders are stepping up fire mitigation efforts. They’re focused on small branches and dead bark, which ignite and spread easily.
“A study of the structures, the risks, the occurrence of wildfires throughout the country says that we are the fifth most vulnerable city in the country,” NWACA Board President Joyce Statz told Austin Free Press. “It’s because of structural damage. If we were to have a wildfire go through much of Austin, the damage would be in the millions in all of the homes that would be destroyed.”
Wildland-Urban Interfaces, where human settlements border untouched nature, pose a special threat because intentional and accidental manmade fires emit embers that can ignite small branches and spread a blaze rapidly. Austin’s wealthy Northwest Hills neighborhood borders many natural areas, with many expensive houses along fire-prone zones.
Owen Moorhead, an Austin Parks and Recreation Department ranger, instructed a dozen volunteers on what branches to look for. “The small-diameter stuff ignites really easily, combusts incompletely and rapidly, because there’s a lot of surface area and very little volume,” he explained. Along with bigger logs, living limbs were off-limits, since their moisture protects them from catching fire.
Statz wants to make local homeowners aware of steps that they can take to safeguard their houses. Organizations like NWACA can’t do anything about brush on private property, and only recently did the city pass an ordinance requiring fire-resistant materials on new builds.
“The very most important thing is that homeowners do something,” Statz said. They’re “responsible for keeping their yards clear of anything that’s burnable next to the house.” NWACA is evaluating homes and telling owners about risks associated with their property.
Future’s Too Bright?
Wildfire Prevention Committee Chair Greg Bondy wants to make sure they can do more in coming years. Bondy said neighbors seemed receptive to the flyers they handed out, though Statz said more engagement is needed.
“It takes outreach,” Bondy said. One neighbor who came out to see the growing piles of extracted fuel told him they were “very excited because they’d been watching it build up for years.”
An NWACA member, Duchen frequently helps with groundskeeping in the forested northwest district that he represents. He’s hoping to make the city a bigger partner in informing people and facilitating clean-ups.
Duchen hopes to build on NWACA’s efforts. “On a shoestring budget, I’m hoping it’s an easy case for me to make,” he said. “To say, let’s set aside a nominal amount of money, whether it’s in the budget, or working with the Parks Foundation… The most important thing is showing that this model works.”
To remove branches from preserves like Barrow, volunteers need permission from the city, which McCaw granted in this case. Currently, there’s no established method to request that permission, something Moorhead hopes to change.
“These have been one-off projects,” Moorhead said about similar events the city supported at Great Hills Park and Stephenson Nature Preserve. “What we would like is for them to stop being, ‘one, one, one, one,’ and become a standardized process.”
Ellington Tough is a junior at Austin’s Liberal Arts and Science Academy (LASA), where he serves as the news editor for the LASA Liberator. He is professionally certified in Adobe production and has won multiple awards for his work.
