The Bradbury House stands out like a sweet plum amid the ashes and charred debris from dozens of burned homes on the north side of Los Alamos. These precautions clearly saved this house from the flames that consumed so many other properties in this area. That's why the Bradbury home and others were featured on our show. We hope it will inspire others to learn to protect their homes. As a result, some 200 to 300 families in the area have adopted fire-resistant landscaping, Valdez said.
Defensive landscaping requires thinning trees on properties in fire-endangered zones.
Valdez and other horticulturists advise homeowners to cut down enough trees to leave a minimum of 10 to 12 feet between plants. Trees left standing should be at least 30 feet from the house. Howard Cady, the current Bradbury House owner, had thinned surrounding trees to 50 to 60 per acre, creating open spaces around the house. In contrast, the nearby forest contained about 1,000 trees per acre when the Los Alamos fire spread. The thinning technique allowed only a low-heat fire to burn on the property, and as a result, the trees there were not injured, but only suffered some charring of the bark at the bottom.