Roper has been holding community meetings in Ventura County for six months to gauge public interest. This spring, his staff will follow up with classes to teach residents how to prepare their homes to withstand flames, as well as some rudimentary firefighting skills.
Ventura's chief is quick to note that the program will not replace professional firefighters.
"It's not teaching them to be firefighters," Roper said. "It's mainly situational awareness and some simple extinguishment skills using mops, garden hoses, buckets -- whatever is available."
The approach is based, in part, on recent research that shows residents with stucco-walled homes typically can safely retreat inside, if a wall of fire passes through. Although the home will become hot and smoky, it will not explode and people inside will not become dangerously overheated.
Recent wildfires in Southern California have brought new converts.
As flames roared toward his Yorba Linda home in November, Jim Unland packed up the family dogs and evacuated.
But two neighbors and an off-duty police officer stayed, spraying garden hoses around homes, dousing spot fires and stowing combustibles before embers blowing miles ahead of the fire wall could ignite them. They saved their own homes and several others, including Unland's.
Unland said their success in battling the Freeway Complex fire convinced him that sticking around to fight the flames is sometimes the smart choice.
"Knowing what I know now, I wouldn't leave," said Unland, 59, a Boeing contracts manager. "I always thought there was this tremendous firestorm with explosions and no oxygen. But it's not that way. People can fight fires if they don't want to leave."
Prather, the O.C. fire chief. said he had some hesitation about joining Roper's effort before the Yorba Linda fire. But he saw that residents in neighborhoods like Unland's helped save dozens of homes that otherwise would have gone up in flames.
Striking early on Nov. 15 in Santa Ana conditions, the Freeway Complex fire, driven by 60-mph gusts, destroyed 190 residences and damaged an additional 123. Yorba Linda was hardest hit with 118 homes destroyed. Outmanned firefighters raced to stay ahead of the fire's erratic path, Prather said.
"An urban environment is a good example of where stay-and-defend works," Prather said. "No matter how many engines and tankers you have, some wildfires will burn right though modern neighborhoods. It's just going to happen."
