Mercury Insurance and Wildfire Expert Douglas Kent Discuss the Basics of Landscaping in Fire Country


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There are steps you can take now to prepare your home, which will help protect your family and property from a wildfire.

California wildfires are more devastating now than ever before – millions of acres and billions of dollars of property are devastated every year.

“California residents can take actions to protect their homes from wildfires,” said Kelly Glover, director of personal property underwriting at Mercury Insurance. “There are steps you can take now to prepare your home, which will help protect your family and property from a wildfire.”

Residents can take proactive measures to help protect their homes, starting with cultivating a fire-resistant landscape that can endure firebrands for days, intense heat for weeks, and resist ignition, helping Californians protect their neighborhoods, homes and families.

Landscape infrastructure, including driveways, pathways and big landscape features, influence how people interact with the land. In order to best protect a structure, creating a landscape with ease of access to and from the structure can allow residents to easily evacuate the property and firefighters to easily reach the structure.

The plants a landscape boasts can influence the way a wildfire interacts with a home – by either leading it directly to the structure, or by stopping it in its tracks. Installing fire resistant and fire retardant plants, as well as maintaining them, is one of the best proactive measures homeowners can take to protect their properties.

Wildfire land management professional Douglas Kent, author of Firescaping: Protecting Your Home with a Fire-Resistant Landscape, offers his expert advice to homeowners.

About Mercury Insurance

Mercury Insurance (MCY) is a multiple-line insurance organization predominantly offering personal automobile, homeowners and commercial insurance through a network of independent agents in Arizona, California, Florida, Georgia, Illinois, Nevada, New Jersey, New York, Oklahoma, Texas and Virginia. Since 1962, Mercury has specialized in offering quality insurance at affordable prices. For more information visit http://www.mercuryinsurance.com or Facebook and follow the company on Twitter.

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