Defense Against Wildfire & The People's Department

Defense Against Wildfire & The People's Department. I'm Greg Martin with today's Northwest Report. With spring here a lot of people are looking at landscaping projects around their homes and if you live in a fire-prone area there are some important measures you may want to take to help make your home or structure defensible to a wildfire according to University of Nevada Cooperative Extension Educator JoAnne Skelly. SKELLY: The idea is with spaces between plants you don't have a continuous fuel bed. You don't want to have like a solid bank of junipers in a fire prone environment because that's a very easy way for that fire to spread – it just leaps from one to the other, to the other. Another thing is you don't want say a juniper bush underneath a pine tree or a spruce tree because it can just climb it like a ladder. She says it's important to use low, non-woody plants near the structure and to create a fuel break like a driveway. USDA has taken the first steps in making – The People's Department – more open to the public. By participating in the Open Government Plan, USDA has formalized plans to integrate openness, transparency, participation and collaboration into the Department's every day operations. The Department's core values of accountability, customer focus and professionalism contribute to meeting these goals. Now here's today's Washington Grange Report. (GRANGE) That's today's Northwest Report. I'm Greg Martin on the Northwest Ag Information Network.