What is a Fire Adaptive Community (FAC)?

A fire adapted community is a community that understands its risk and takes action before, during and after the fire in order for their community to be more resilient to wildfire. Fire adapted community members are informed and prepared, collaboratively planning and taking action to better live with wildland fire. 

People learning and working together are the foundation of fire adaptation. Fire Adaptive Communities Net invests in people and in place-based efforts to change relationships with fire. Together, we empower leaders, resource strategic action, develop tools, and create and share approaches to increase wildfire resilience. Improving fire management requires changing our culture, and Fire Adaptive Communities Net members are leading that change. Learn more at https://fireadaptednetwork.org.

At its core, the fire adapted communities (or FAC) concept is a framework to help us better coexist with fire.  FAC is not a one-size fits all approach, a checklist, or a specific set of actions a community must take. FAC is also not an end point. Your community is always changing; change is constant in our social and political environments,  ecosystems, and economies.

The beauty of FAC as a framework is that communities of all sizes, economies, policies, etc. can take ideas and concepts and adapt them to meet their local needs.  This means FAC work is never complete. It is something we will need to steward throughout time.

Each community will improve their wildfire resilience using steps and strategies unique to them. You know your community best! Broadly speaking, the more actions a community takes to improve their wildfire outcomes, the more fire adapted they become. 

Want to learn more? Check out the FAC Graphic and Facilitators Guide.  

Fire Adapted Communities Learning Network:

Stop Focusing on Ignitions and Start Investing in a Prescribed Fire Workforce

Imagine if for every dollar we spent on wildfire suppression, we spent one on prescribed fire.

The way a fire burns isn’t always dictated by how it starts. Forests and grasslands don’t burn at extreme intensities, destroy homes, kill people, and denude entire ecosystems because of a downed power line, a person with a campfire, or a National Park that chooses to manage a lightning strike for resource benefit. You could bury every power line — or shut down the entire grid — and still not solve our wildfire problem.

The intensity of a fire depends on numerous variables, including wind, slope and fuel. Ignition sources don’t give us the full picture as to why a fire burns the way it does. In many cases, unfavorable wildfire outcomes are happening in places that have had so little fire that the fuel beds are simply too great to keep a new wildfire low and cool. Read More.