REALFire® is a wildfire risk reduction program that provides homeowners in Eagle County with an opportunity to take action on their property. The program provides free property assessments to educate residents on how their home and landscaping may be susceptible to wildfire and specific ways to reduce wildfire threat. The program is locally managed by Eagle County in collaboration with the Vail Board of REALTORS®.
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I knew I had to have our home and property in Cordillera inspected for our safety after attending the REALFire Class at the Vail Board of REALTORS® office. My hesitation about having the Wildfire Mitigation Assessment had been I didn’t want to hear we needed to cut down all the trees within 30 feet of our home. To my surprise, we weren’t told we needed to cut down any trees. The Eagle County Assessor, Eric Lovgren, made a list of several fairly easy things to do to reduce our wildfire risk. We need to enclose our outside storage area to prevent ignition of combustible material inside by embers. We need to install metal flashing on our deck at the junction to prevent ember accumulations from igniting the siding. Then there were a couple of smaller things like removing all the wood mulch, leaf litter, and all juniper from around our deck. We had replaced our wood shake roof in 2018 with DaVinci roofing, which was the best mitigation step we could have taken. The wood shake roofs create a huge risk to our homes and our neighbor’s homes. Lastly, we needed to have an evacuation plan and review the escape routes in Cordillera.
I am thrilled that we took the time to have the assessment done on our home. I pray that all of our neighbors and other Cordillera residents will take wildfire mitigation seriously, so we can all work towards making our homes and subdivisions a safer place to live.