Defensible space and fire mitigation in Stagecoach, NV

Stagecoach is a spread-out community in the valley between Dayton and Silver Springs. Big trees are scattered. What carries fire here is what covers the ground between the houses.

At a glance

• 39.7% of buildings direct exposure, 60.3% indirect, none minimal
• About 49% of homes are manufactured homes
• Nearest gauge: about 6.2 inches of precipitation a year
• About 23 miles from our Carson City yard

How does fire move through low fuel?

Fast. Cured grass and sagebrush burn quickly and a wind pushes the fire across flat ground with nothing to slow it. The flames are lower than in timber, which is the good news: a mowed, broken-up strip around a home takes away most of what they feed on before they reach the walls.

That is the logic of the Living With Fire zones on a valley lot. From 30 to 100 feet, the brush is mowed or thinned into separated clumps. From 5 to 30 feet, plants are few, green and apart. In the first 5 feet, nothing burns.

Mowing with a track loader

We own a 2014 Bobcat T870 with a brush mower and a masticating head. On open, fairly level ground, which is most of Stagecoach, it is the efficient way to cut a 100-foot ring around a house and its outbuildings. The arborist walks the lot first to mark septic lids, wellheads, water lines and anything else the machine must stay off.

Which attachment suits which brush is explained in mastication vs brush mowing vs hand clearing. Clearing beyond the home zone is on the Stagecoach lot clearing and brush mowing page.

Close to the home, by hand

About 49% of homes in Stagecoach are manufactured homes and about 47% are site-built detached houses (American Community Survey; under 2,000 residents, so approximate). For both, a machine stops well short of the walls. The last strip is cut by hand: tumbleweeds and dry weeds against skirting and fences, shrubs under windows, dead plants in old flower beds.

Tumbleweeds deserve a mention. They pile against fences and under decks in every wind, and they burn in seconds. Clearing them is part of the visit, and keeping them cleared between visits is the most useful ten minutes an owner can spend.

What trees there are

Shade trees in a place this dry live on irrigation. The nearest gauge with a normal, Silver Springs 6.6 SSW, about 8 miles from the center of Stagecoach, averages 6.22 inches of precipitation a year. When a well pump fails or a property sits empty, the trees decline and then die standing.

A dead tree near a house is fuel and a falling hazard. We remove them and can grind the stump. For a tree that is only thinning, see drought stress and dieback, or ask for an arborist's opinion before deciding.

Where Stagecoach stands in the numbers

Risk to homes in Stagecoach ranks higher than 93.5% of US communities and a little above the middle for Nevada, at 52.5%. That is lower than Dayton next door. The reason we still build a defensible space page here is the direct exposure share, about 40% of roughly 1,400 buildings.

Ten perimeter records of 300 acres or more since 1980 have centers within about 10 miles, among them the Gooseberry Fire of 1985 (29,296 acres), the Ramsey Fire of 2000 (7,621 acres), the Chaves Fire of 2018 (3,438 acres) and the Micro Fire of 2017 (1,549 acres), the last two centered about 5 miles away.