We help neighborhoods organize
Through the Firewise USA® steps — risk assessment, action plan, annual investment, renewal — and past the places new groups usually stall.
About us
Austin Area Firewise Alliance
A volunteer organization working on wildfire preparedness with neighborhoods across Travis County — inside the City of Austin and throughout the unincorporated county.
What we are
The Alliance is residents. We are not a fire department, a city office, or a county agency, and we have no authority to order anything. What we have is the part of wildfire preparedness that has always belonged to neighborhoods: clearing the fuel around our own houses, organizing the streets we live on, and asking the agencies clear questions about what happens on the day.
Fire departments across the county have spent years building this knowledge and sharing it with residents. Carrying that work forward into a resident-run organization is the point of the Alliance: the departments have a fire to fight, and the preparation is ours to keep doing.
We connect residents to the right agency
Whether your address is covered by the Austin Fire Department or by an Emergency Services District changes who assesses your property and who partners on an application.
We press on evacuation planning
Especially for neighborhoods with a single exit. We put the specific questions to the agencies and publish what comes back.
We pass along what works
Chipper days, brush disposal, getting an assessment scheduled, keeping a committee staffed. Solved once should mean solved for everyone.
Where we work
All of Travis County. The wildland-urban interface here is not a band around the edge of the city — it runs through it, along every greenbelt, canyon, and cedar break, and out into the county on both sides of the river. A fire does not care which jurisdiction it started in, and neither does the preparation.
If your neighborhood is in a surrounding county and wants to organize, get in touch anyway. We would rather point you at the right contact than have you stop looking.
Get involved
Bring a neighborhood, an hour, a truck, or a question. All of it is useful, and none of it costs anything.
Start a Firewise site
The highest-leverage thing a resident can do here. How it works →
Host or help at an event
Chipper days, work weekends, and walk-throughs need hands and organizers more than they need speakers.
Request a presentation
For an HOA meeting, a neighborhood association, or a community group. Ask us →
Just get the updates
Seasonal reminders and answers from agencies, a few times a year. Sign up →
Where our guidance comes from
Nothing on this site is invented. It follows established national and state practice, and the sources are worth going to directly.
NFPA / Firewise USA®
The recognition program and the research behind defensible space and home ignition zones. nfpa.org/firewise
Texas A&M Forest Service
The state wildfire agency: risk assessments, the Texas Wildfire Risk Assessment Portal, and statewide incident information. tfsweb.tamu.edu
Local fire departments and ESDs
The Austin Fire Department and the county's Emergency Services Districts — the people who assess properties and respond.
Regional emergency management
Warn Central Texas for alerts, the Travis County Fire Marshal for burn bans, TDEM for the STEAR registry.