Wild Fire and the Wildland-Urban Interface: Planning for A Safe Coexistence
Wednesday, September 28th 8:00 a.m. – Noon
Hassayampa Inn Marina A

Arizona planners, both rural and urban, have a unique opportunity to learn about the basics elements of wild fire and solutions to the complications faced by communities in the wildland-urban interface. This is a topic at the forefront in Arizona over the last several summers. What is the wildland-urban interface? How is it defined? How many individuals live there? These are just a few of the questions we’ll explore during this half-day workshop.

Professional firefighters will provide insight to basic firefighting techniques and philosophy. Attendees will walk away from this session with a basic understanding of the effort required to defend structures and property in the wildland-urban interface. While firefighting is generally not a skill associated with planning, there is a direct correlation between the two when speaking about the wildland-urban interface. With the help of professional planners, we will marry the two disciplines to illustrate the merits of fire planning.

Professional and citizen planners alike will benefit from the specific discussion on regulatory fire planning and how to ensure the regulatory documents in your community are consistent with a safety-oriented approach ideology. Some fire planning best practices and success stories will be highlighted to illustrate valuable planning tools you can enlist in your own community. Session materials will include a detailed resource handout. This will be an interactive session with scenario problem solving and plenty of questions and answers.

Many well respected leaders in the fields of firefighting and fire protection, planning and forestry will participate as speakers and as members of a panel discussion. Some of those may include: Steve Gatewood, Greater Flagstaff Forest Partnership; Sue Pratt, Coconino County; Ted Galde, Prescott Fire Marshal; Darrel Willis, Prescott Fire Chief; Duane Steinbrink, Prescott Wildlands/Urban Interface Coordinator.

You may register for this workshop along with your conference registration, or you may register for the workshop as a separate activity.

Moderators: Robert Kuhfuss, Senior Planner, Maricopa County Planning; Heather Garbarino, Senior Planner, Arizona Department of Commerce, Community Planning Office.

8:00 Introduction

8:35 Fire Behavior - Fire Triangle, Fire Factors: Fuels, Weather, Topography, Mitigations: wild land vs. structure, engine, hand, air, medical, tactics/scenarios, unhealthy forest structure, 100 years of fire suppression history, Healthy Forests Initiative.

9:35 Planning - Comprehensive planning, regulatory planning, interactive scenarios.

10:55 Additional Thoughts - Countering objections and resources for future reference.

11:20 Panel Discussion & Q&A.