Eastlake’s Luis Lopez provides wildfire assessments for DNR
June 29, 2010
By Administrator
When he began his senior year at Eastlake High School last fall, Luis Lopez contemplated what he would work on for his senior culminating project, which was required for graduation. He thought about learning to play a musical instrument, and then, maybe, to be a Spanish tutor, as Spanish is his first language, he said.
But he eventually found a program with the Washington Department of Natural Resources that offered training and experience for a completely different project — fire prevention. He started logging hours in September.
Lopez recently completed a months-long Firewise fire prevention program, which took him through the woods of Sammamish to learn what it takes to make one’s home and property safe in the event of a wildfire.
He chose the project because it was different than a lot of his classmates’ projects, he said.
“It wouldn’t be just any project,” Lopez said. “It would also benefit the community.”
From September to June, Lopez took online fire prevention courses to develop techniques and basic skills to conduct fire risk assessments for homeowners and small communities in Sammamish. He earned certificates in “landscaping,” “firefighter safety” and “conducting a community assessment,” according to the department.
Doing a neighborhood or community fire risk assessment entails checking areas for fuel build-up, Lopez said.
That means he compiled data and notes on trees, grasses and other vegetation close to a building that can allow a fire to grow or travel.
Lopez assessed seven homes during his project, he said. His reports then ended up in a database, which DNR officials study.
“That will help Sammamish community in the future because people at DNR (now) know about the Sammamish Plateau,” Lopez said. “I found out overall Sammamish is a pretty safe area.”
The point to his assessments was to help a homeowner or community members understand how they can create defensible space against a wildfire, he said. Residents can create defensible space by regularly maintaining their yards, clearing dead trees, shrubs or branches.
He said people whose homes he assessed mostly didn’t know they had little defensible space on the property.
“Luis did an amazing job for DNR,” said Janet Pearce, Lopez’s department advisor for the project. “He was able to teach himself the aspects of home risk assessment and then, in turn, teach his community about his findings.”
Lopez needed 60 hours logged for the senior project credit, but logged 74, he said.
“(I enjoyed) just going out there, talking to different people and just doing something different that I had never really done before,” Lopez said.
The Firewise Communities program is a national effort aimed at educating homeowners, community leaders, planners and developers about how they can protect people and property around them to prevent or minimize the affects of a wildfire, according to Firewise. The program emphasizes the community’s role in planning emergency response and the individual’s responsibility in making their home and property safe.
The ultimate goal of the organization is to collaborate with communities and various other fire agencies to reduce loss of life and property and maintain a community in a way compatible with its natural surroundings.
A consortium of wildland fire organizations and federal agencies, including the Federal Emergency Management Agency and the National Park Service, runs the program.
Lopez is headed to Bellevue College in the fall and said he is considering going into a fire-protection-related field, among other interests.
Reporter Christopher Huber can be reached at 392-6434, ext. 242, or chuber@isspress.com.
Other Stories of Interest: Eastlake High School
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