Defensible space is an area around your house where fuels and vegetation are treated, cleared or reduced to slow the spread of fire. This area allows firefighters to protect your home from an advancing wildfire. Without defensible space, firefighters cannot safely fight the fire and cannot put their lives at risk to protect property. By creating a defensible space, you increase the odds of your house surviving a wildland fire. Thinning trees, removing brush, mowing grass, and climbing up trees near the house reduces the intensity of the fire around your home. Creating breaks in the vegetation, including breaks between trees, around your house provides natural barriers that help firefighters slow the fire and reduce potential loss.  The purpose of defensible space is to prevent a fire from moving from your home to the forest, and vice versa, as well as to provide firefighters with adequate room to maneuver.