Is Your Business Ready for Wildfire Season?
Here are five areas worth reviewing now, along with resources available through Be Ready Butte.
1. Review Your Business Insurance Coverage
Take time to review your commercial insurance coverage before an emergency occurs. Consider discussing the following with your insurance representative:
- Whether your policy addresses wildfire, smoke damage, and business interruption
- How mandatory evacuations may affect coverage for lost income
- Whether current building, equipment, and inventory values are accurately reflected
- Whether outdoor signage, stored equipment, and exterior inventory are included
Insurance needs vary by business and policy. Your insurance representative can help identify the coverage and documentation appropriate for your organization.
2. Review Defensible Space Around Your Property
Businesses with landscaping, storage areas, loading zones, or other outdoor spaces should review current defensible-space guidance.
- Keep the area within 5 feet of any structure clear of anything flammable: mulch, dry landscaping, stored pallets, or cardboard.
- Clear dead vegetation, leaves, and debris from roofs, gutters, and around HVAC units or generators.
- Store any flammable materials, fuel, or waste containers away from the building and away from delivery or loading areas.
- If your property backs up to open space, grass, or wildland areas, this is especially critical.
Property requirements can vary by location. Visit BeReadyButte.com for current guidance and information about creating defensible space.
3. Know Your Evacuation Zone, and Your Employees' Zones
Every property in Butte County falls into a numbered evacuation zone, and knowing yours in advance means faster, clearer decisions if an order comes through during business hours.
- Look up your business address at bereadybutte.com under Know Your Zone.
- Share the zone number with your team so everyone knows what to watch for.
- Encourage employees to check their home zones too. A family evacuation can affect staffing as much as a business one.
- Build zone awareness into any written emergency plan you already have for your business.
4. Sign Up for Butte County's New Emergency Alert System
Butte County recently upgraded its emergency notification system. The new system, Butte County Smart 911, replaces the previous CodeRED platform.
- Sign up directly; don't assume you were carried over automatically from the old system. Prior CodeRED registrations did not transfer.
- Create a free Smart911 profile for your business with accurate contact information, including cell numbers, so alerts reach the right person even outside business hours.
- Choose how you want to be notified: text, phone call, or email.
Encourage employees to sign up individually as well, both for work and home addresses.
5. Put a Written Fire Action Plan in Place for Your Business
A written plan can help reduce confusion when decisions need to be made quickly.
Your plan should identify:
- Who has authority to close or evacuate the business
- How employees will receive instructions
- At least two routes away from the property
- Where insurance records, contact lists, and critical documents are stored
- How customers, vendors, and delivery partners will be notified
- How smoke, road closures, or power disruptions may affect operations
Review the plan with employees before peak fire conditions and update it whenever staffing, contact information, or operating procedures change.