Living With Fire program continues to develop new ways to reach and educate homeowners on reducing wildfire threats
Ed Smith educates homeowners on wildfire threat reduction. Photo by Jean Dixon
Since the Living With Fire program’s inception 11 years ago, the University of Nevada Cooperative Extension program coordinator and natural resources specialist Ed Smith continues to develop new ways to reach and educate homeowners with a consistent message on wildfire threat reduction. Although the program spans the entire state, the Lake Tahoe Basin’s uniqueness as a natural resource and the high threat of wildfire to homeowners in the Basin make it a place of particular interest to the Living With Fire program.
The program officially began in 1998 as a joint project between Cooperative Extension and the Nevada Agricultural Experiment Station with Smith and Paul Tueller at the helm. But Smith’s interest in fire management and natural resources was sparked years earlier when he worked at the Incline Village Cooperative Extension office at Lake Tahoe in 1988.
“On the second day of the job, the Incline Village Fire Marshall came by and introduced himself to me,” Smith said. “From that day forward we started a great partnership. Living With Fire and several other programs can be traced back to 1988 in Incline Village.”
Since then, the program’s partnerships in the Lake Tahoe Basin have burgeoned to include local fire districts, the U.S. Forest Service, the Nevada Fire Safe Council, the Nevada Division of Forestry, and the Bureau of Land Management.
The program essentially works as a vehicle for delivering a consistent message to homeowners on how to stem the threat of wildfire in Lake Tahoe. Living With Fire reaches homeowners in multiple ways through publications, magazines, online workshops and video. Smith said developing this consistent message with approval from the many organizations involved is the most important facet of Living With Fire and its greatest strength.
“The target audience needs to hear a consistent message told multiple times by multiple agencies,” Smith said. “Instead of the fire department, the U.S. Forest Service, the University and others developing different education materials for homeowners, why don’t we bring everybody who has a vested interested in this issue and come together, share our resources and develop one set of high quality effective educational materials?”
Apart from helping to develop the message, Smith facilitates meetings among the different agencies and oversees the development of materials.
“Working with communities and people is where my heart is,” Smith said.
Smith is currently working on a project called “Be Ember Aware,” a series of materials with focused advice on how to keep homes and properties safe from embers, small burning particles produced by wildfires that can land on roofs or porches and ignite larger fires. Another upcoming project includes an educational series on the flammability of landscape mulches.
Though Smith’s work takes him to all corners of Nevada, Lake Tahoe has been a place of insatiable interest for Smith since his first days at the Incline Village office.
“The Lake Tahoe Basin is one of the great natural resource treasures in the nation,” he said. “But it can be a very challenging and confusing place for people to live. To me, the challenges of trying to balance natural resource uses and environmental quality all come to a head up at the lake.”
Guia Marie Del Prado 