Round Rock police identify suspect fatally shot by officer, say he stabbed parents<\/a><\/p>\nThe timing is critical.<\/p>\n
August is typically Texas’ busiest month for wildfires, when extreme heat, dry vegetation and low humidity create ideal conditions for fires to spread quickly. Dry grass and brush need only a single spark to ignite.<\/p>\n
Oak Hill Fire Chief Jeffrey Wittig says wildfire risk extends well beyond rural areas.<\/p>\n
“This map really depicts fire risk to structures in Travis County,” Wittig said.<\/p>\n
While the greatest concentration of wildfire risk is east of Austin, officials say tens of thousands of homes across Travis County face an elevated threat.<\/p>\n
“The more we can do to prepare our structures, to prepare our homes, our yards, everything around us, the better off we’ll be,” Wittig said.<\/p>\n
One of the most important ways to protect a home is by creating what is known as defensible space\u2014clearing brush, shrubs, and other vegetation away from the structure to help slow or stop an approaching wildfire.<\/p>\n
Experts say homeowners should also pay close attention to their backyard fences.<\/p>\n
Traditional wooden privacy fences can act like kindling, carrying flames directly to a home’s roofline.<\/p>\n
“You don’t put a wooden fence right next to your home,” Austin City Council Member Paige Ellis said. “So now they’re installing sections, you know, five feet away that are iron, and that way if your fence does catch on fire, it stops before it actually touches your home.”<\/p>\n
Fire officials say homeowners do not have to guess how vulnerable their property may be.<\/p>\n
The Austin Fire Department offers a free, confidential home assessment known as a Structure Ignition Zone Evaluation or SIZE. During the assessment, inspectors identify potential wildfire hazards and provide homeowners with a prioritized action plan to better protect their homes before the next wildfire sparks.<\/p>\n
Requests for a SIZE can be made through the Austin Wildfire Hub<\/a> or by calling 311.<\/p>\nAs Central Texas heads deeper into another stretch of dangerous heat, fire experts say preparing now could make all the difference when the next wildfire threatens a neighborhood.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Another day of triple-digit heat has Austin preparing for what is typically the hottest, driest month of the…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":398813,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[11],"tags":[132,134,133],"class_list":["post-398812","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-austin","tag-austin","tag-austin-headlines","tag-austin-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/398812","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=398812"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/398812\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/398813"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=398812"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=398812"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=398812"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}