It’s a question all Californians must ask themselves: Is my home fire safe?
Marinite Jason Brooks found himself asking this question after the 2017 North Bay fires and the seeming increase in fires ever since. Determined to find an answer, Brooks met with local fire agencies and academic experts, but was only given a generic checklist of ways to improve the safety of his home. “I was looking for something more specific like what tree do I take out? What do I change in my house?” Brooks says.
What started as a desire to fireproof his home turned into the creation of a platform that millions of residents use to make their homes safer: Fire Aside. Now in seven states and 21 counties in California, Fire Aside partners with local fire agencies to help their communities adapt to wildfire. Residents in communities where Fire Aside is utilized are five times more likely to take defensible space- and home-hardening actions.
“There is this complexity of every single home and every single human is different, so how do you best meet people and their homes where they are to get them to do something?” Brooks, now CEO of Fire Aside, says as he emphasizes the importance of the platform’s personalized approach to different communities and individual homes.
With Fire Aside’s Defensible Space Inspection software, residents receive a customized interactive report for their property with actions prioritized by risk factor. In 2023, 81 percent of Marin residents cited this Fire Aside report as to why they removed hazardous vegetation.
“The fact that it’s digital and personalized to their property allows so many more interactions to happen. It’s not just one time that you’re fixing something in your yard; this is an every year type of process in every community,” says Brooks.
Removing hazardous vegetation is also made simple with Fire Aside’s ChipperDay platform: software that allows residents to easily schedule curbside pickups with their local fire agency. In turn, fire agencies are able to actually measure their community impact.
“Fire Aside software, and particularly the customized resident report, is at the heart of our wildfire prevention program,” says executive officer of the Marin Wildfire Prevention Authority Mark Brown. “The best part is we can understand where work is actually being done by residents so we can better allocate taxpayer funding from Measure C on areas where we will be the most effective and that have the most risk.”
Brooks says, “Marin has historically been a leader when it comes to wildfire innovation.” And although the platform has already helped millions of residents, Brooks still thinks there’s more to do.
“While we’ve had a lot of success, we’re still at day zero of supporting all the fire agencies and communities that we can help,” he says. “We know we make a big difference in the communities where we operate, so how do we get into more communities to make a bigger impact?”
