GENTRY — “Gentry has achieved the status of a FireWise Community,” Gentry Fire Chief Vester Cripps reported at the June 6 Gentry City Council meeting.

“Basically that means we looked at every house in the fire district to determine the load to fight a fire there,” Cripps said.

Cripps also told council members that Benton County was the first county in the state of Arkansas to achieve the FireWise status, in December of 2010.

The National Fire Protection Association’s Firewise Communities program encourages local solutions for wildfire safety by involving homeowners, community leaders, planners, developers, firefighters and others inthe effort to protect people and property from the risk of wildfire. The program is co-sponsored by the U.S. Department of Agriculture Forest Service, the U.S. Department of the Interior and the National Association of State Foresters.

The program also offers education to homeowners in methods of preventing a wildfire from destroying their homes. Some of the prevention methods include hazard assessments, choosing fire-resistant construction materials, using landscaping measures and debris removal to prevent wildfires from reaching and igniting homes and fire safety plans.

For more information on the FireWise program and ways to prevent fires from spreading and destroying your home, visit www.firewise.org.

News, Pages 16 on 06/29/2011