Sandra Williams is the wildfire prevention education program manager for the Washington State Department of Natural Resources' Resource Protection Division. She says that proving the essential nature of prevention programs is a matter of marketing.

You're neither a fire service member nor a forester. How does that help?

I don't have any preconceived notions; what I see is what the public sees. I go out to the Firewise workshops and talk to the public, [and] I understand why the public isn't buying into this campaign. You have all these people, a diversity of contractors and developers and the fire folks, trying to scare people with “we're going to flag your house.” It doesn't work. Why scare them when you can approach them with something that is palatable, something they are interested in? You can encourage them [with] something they are interested in and let them buy in slowly.

Don't tell people they need to clear 30 or 60 feet. Start with the gardening and explain to them that for the health of the plant, for the health of the trees, this is what you need to do. That is much better received, a teaspoon of sugar, than trying to slap somebody upside the head when you can explain why and how. I just love to look at it from a different perspective. Some of these people are so close to the subject matter that they can't see the forest.

Another item is Smokey. He's a great icon, [but] people relate him to kids, and that's why prevention doesn't get funded. The forest service, the state agencies, they talk a good talk when they talk about prevention, but where is it when it needs to be funded? It's way at the bottom and doesn't get funded because it isn't sexy.…

Are you only focusing on rural, wildland areas or the interface?

My agency is wildland, and we're called wildfire prevention, but there is that overlap. We're proposing … a wildfire prevention conference annually. I sit on the Pacific Northwest Coordinating Group, and we helped sponsor a wildland prevention conference, a very small 300-person conference, mainly Oregon and Washington area. The northern Rockies group has Montana, Idaho and another state that goes into this and has a conference. There's a lot of work in this. We'd like to see this across the nation; that's how we're going to make mass changes. It's not going to happen overnight, but it's sure going to happen a lot quicker by attacking the broad scale rather than me going state to state.

What's your vision for wildfire prevention education?

We need to get this out to the masses.… It's not going to happen overnight. Time is of the essence, but it will happen a lot quicker if we attract it instead of me calling state by state.

Here's a good example of limited thinking. I called Steve Fitzgerald … and Amy Jo Detweiler, Oregon State University, [who] put together [Fire-Resistant Plants for Oregon Home Landscapes]. I asked Steve to consider making a book for the Pacific Northwest. We used his Oregon book here in Washington. The climate zone in British Columbia and Vancouver is the same. Make it for the Pacific Northwest, and we could all use the book and make the book like a gardening book. People want to get information; they want the deer in their yard or out of their yard, there's no in between. They want to know what plants, the water needs and sunlight needs. Fire guys can go around and talk about a defensible design; they are not landscapers and can't tell people which plants grow what height and how to create the fire-safe English garden. They can tell you what to clear out, but they don't know how high they grow.

Our urban foresters use the book, and people love them. My agency got 20,000 for free; Oregon got 20,000 for free because of a grant that Steve put in to modify his Oregon fire-resistant plant list and make it more like a gardening book. He had Idaho University and [Washington State University] review it, so it's broader-based and reviewed for invasive and native specifies. And that's one example of people with great products and great ideas.…

We also used a local celebrity, Ciscoe Morris, a master gardener and certified arborist, and he loves it! He has learned so much, he does radio and television shows. He takes the books that were done by Oregon State University and hands them out. That's a phenomenal opportunity to educate the public about fire-resistant plants.

I have a seven-minute DVD and a brochure that I wrote that goes with it and a survey on it. I also have a half-hour show, using Morris again, that took a professional landscaper in a west side and east side property with the different landscape materials, and that aired on TV.

To obtain a copy of the brochure or video, e-mail sandy.williams@wadnr.gov.