DULZURA, Calif. — San Diego is a beautiful place, but the risk of losing it all to a wildfire just comes with the territory. To combat this, some of our most vulnerable areas are getting a fire-resistant makeover.
“It feels like a big weight off the shoulders more than anything,” said Chris Bilbrey, who owns a home in Dulzura. “The whole point of wanting to do it and figuring it out was keeping not only the home safe, but the family safe.”
Bilbrey is the first homeowner in San Diego County taking advantage of grant money from the California Wildfire Mitigation Program (CWMP).
“We removed all the combustible vegetation back five feet and hardscaped it with ignition-resistant rocks,” said San Diego County Fire Battalion Chief Cal Hendrie as he showed CBS 8 all the upgrades to Bilbrey's home.
“Their deck was constructed of a flammable Douglas fir, so we replaced all this wood on this deck. It’s now a 20-minute fire-treated lumber," said Hendrie. “On the bottom of the deck, we’ve got screens to prevent embers from getting underneath the deck.”
They replaced attic vents on the roof with ember-resistant ones, and they changed out all the nylon window screens with aluminum ones to keep embers out of the house.
“This had native vegetation 15 foot tall all throughout this area right here," said Hendrie as he showed CBS 8 the backyard area. "We went through here, had crews clear all the vegetation back, limb all the trees up six feet, all the way out to one hundred feet from the house.”
State and local fire officials gathered outside Bilbrey's home Tuesday morning to showcase the results made possible by the new pilot program.
“If we’re home and a fire breaks out and we’re not able to get out, we know we’re in a building that is safe as physically possible," said Bilbrey. "It helps create a lot of relief.”
Fire officials expect to retrofit 300-500 homes with the CWMP funding, focusing first on Dulzura, then moving on to homes in Portrero and Campo. If you’d like to apply, you can find more information here.