The Oakland, Calif., house of a woman I know was unharmed in the 1990s fire that penetrated deep into Oakland because it had a metal roof, while the houses on either side, with wooden shakes—kindling!—were destroyed.
Then there are all the Eucalyptus trees in California, which burn like a torch when ignited.
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In the face of massive losses of property, California is poised to declare itself a SANCTUARY STATE. While California's illegal immigrant population has swelled the Brown administration and the legislature proposes to hang out the welcome sign and a generous package of perks such as Healthcare, Schools, Welfare, Public Housing. Brown recently complained about California's inability to find money to fix its infrastructure and wants to tap Federal resources to help support his newly imported voters. Among those applauding California's plan are poor illegal immigrants from Central America and Mexico. The later not only exports illegals but now dumps millions of gallons of raw sewage into the Pacific which contaminates California's coastline and the mammoth Clinton/Obama Coastal National Monument maintained by our tax dollars. California's hubris is astounding.
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No need to burn down the house to eat roast pig.
Santa Ana winds? Really?
Maybe an inversion layer tossed in for good measure.
Then something to break the inversion and the jet stream over southern Canada sends warm dry air south . As the air descends, it heats.
Fire resistant structures? Why not? Cement of tile roofs, gutters that don't trap leaves. Road side fuel clearance. Pre position water for fire fighting.
Zebra stripe clearance stripes or ridge lines.
Single inspection by third party inspectors to cover aspects of both protecting forests and protecting houses.
Dedicated risk reduction programs. If you did what you did, expect to get what you got.
Code red? Red flag?
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Let's begin with some basic info about Los Angeles and Ventura counties. Poeple in almost all of LA and Ventura live relatively close to hills (1-2 miles away). Mountains and canyons run through Los Angeles. So, the idea of "don't build close to hills" is not going to work. This also is not new construction. Homes were built in these areas in the 1940s and 50s. The whole area also is prone to earthquakes. So, building concrete, cement, cinderblock or brick houses is not going to work either because those structure collapse in earthquakes. SoCal has had 6 years of drought; the Santa Ana winds created extraordinarily fast moving fires. Those are the major factors in the fire. Not people watering their lawns, not SUVs, not houses built in the hills, not lack of public transit, not lack of concrete homes.
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Maybe too many people live in CA and the state's most desirable spots cannot sustain the expansion of homes in areas where there will always be fires. Just a thought.
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That would be nearly all of Southern California. Much of Los Angeles and Ventura counties are in areas where there is a risk of fire. 6 years of drought creates that risk. While we're at it, much of the west and plains are also at risk of fire. And the coastal areas of the U.S. are at risk for hurricanes (see: Houston, New York, New Orleans, Florida, just the recent examples). The Midwest is at risk for tornadoes (see: Missouri). Anyone living near a river or ocean is at risk for flooding. I won't get into earthquake risk. When you find a place without risk for natural disasters, let me know and we can all move there.
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People thought the Titanic could not sink. Mother Nature can be a tough foe.
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Your two large photos show a lot of trees very close to homes. Unfortunately it doesn't do much good to rake up leaves, if the trees that dropped them can carry the fire to your house.
Humans, It is time for grand retreat!
When I was a child in Santa Cruz, our house was stucco. A LOT of homes were stucco. Santa Cruz was moist and I never rememember any drastic fires back then, but we would go to very hot and dry San Jose in the summer and a LOT of those homes were also stucco. What happened to using practical fireproof stucco? A wonderful new substance that is CHEAP is foam crete, AKA air crete. It's quite heat resistant and due to the air bubbles mixed in with the cement, it much more insulative than regular concrete. We had a 400 yr old cypress right near the house, huge beautiful tree, that we would never have been so comfortable in the summer without it. We had the usual asphalt shingles as so many do, I don't remember there being too many wood shingles, and in the case of fire, I would never consider them now. What are these roofs being made of that they are blowing up in fire? Metal is good and ceramic is good. I am sure there must be many other roofing options in this day and age.
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Huh? A huge number of the homes and businesses that burned in Santa Rosa and neighboring fires were stucco. Ditto all those homes in Ventura that succumbed to the Thomas Fire. And remember the fire storms in San Diego ten years ago (the Witch fire and others)? Entire developments burned. The houses were all stucco. Plenty of homes with tile roofs burned in these fires.
My home is stucco, and I have a fireproof roof. I fully expect it to burn if the conditions get bad enough. Houses can burn from the inside out.
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Wind-blown embers won't ignite a house with a clay tile roof and brick walls.
It still has to be protected from nearby brush that could ignite it through the windows.
Few build with brick out here in California, unlike in the Midwest. And a tile roof is not going to save your house from burning if there is a wall of fire around it. It’s true that a few embers on a tile roof may not be enough to ignite, but that’s true of any fire-resistant roof (composition tile or fire-treated shakes, or even metal). The problem is that people often have flammable debris in their gutters (in a wind-driven fire, this is especially true) and roof valleys, which can ignite, and that fire will spread into the eaves and then into the roof timbers. People often have wood decks attatched to their homes, too, and those can ignite. Wind-blown debris can collect under an overhanging eave and ignite from embers, and so cause the house to burn.
So many people here come up with those supposedly easy solutions. There is nothing easy or simple about wildfires. Nothing.
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You don't build brick houses in earthquake zones.
I used to live in Rancho Bernardo, just north of San Diego, in 1984. In that town, it was a building regulation that all buildings had to have a terra cotta fire proof tile roof. Of course it's more expensive than a wooden roof, because of the weight, but it's a renewable resource and less expensive than losing everything you have.
And it will not protect your home in a mega-fire like the ones we have been seeing. Many of the homes that have burned had tile roofs.
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NOTHING will protect a house from a mega-fire.
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Still another piece of evidence that the American reliance on the private sector, in particular the housing industry, is mistaken. We have allowed the builders, brokers and bankers decide what to build and where to build it. In the face of serious problems, we reluctantly impose and enforce a regulatory framework. Even maintaining a reasonable set of regulations requires a constant battle to beat back the real estate industry's attacks.
Nonetheless, a stronger governmental presence could radically reduce the toll from the west coast's endemic wildfires. Forbidding construction in fire prone areas alone would make a huge difference. Subsidizing construction is safer areas, mandating fire-resistant (and earthquake resistant) construction and like measures should also be parts of the program.
In Mexico, people don't build houses from timber and drywall. They build with concrete and brick. Concrete walls, concrete roofs, concrete internal walls, concrete floors, tiled in ceramic.
Why do Californians use inferior, inflammable materials in their houses? Is it just cheapness? Or what?
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Wood framed houses stand up reasonably well in earthquakes. Brick buildings fall on your head in earthquakes. That seems to be the main reason. Plus, cheapness.
I would agree that we need to use MUCH more fireproof construction in CA, however. There's no good excuse to not do so.
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Because concrete and brick collapse during earthquakes.
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What about fire proof construction for houses in dangerous areas ? Initially very costly but better than the loss from the house burning down.
1/ The cause has not been determined for these or NoCal fires last month, but power lines going underground would most likely prevent most of these fires. It's expensive, but worth it.
2/ Defensible space does matter and cutting down dead trees will most definitely help. This is something we all have to do together and agree to as a community. Most homes that were lost in these fires had no defensible space (mine included, sadly). Of course, with 80+mph winds, anything is possible, but you'd be surprised how many homes were saved because they did not have fuel to ignite their homes 100ft around them.
3/ We need a community communication system for evacuations that does not rely on the internet or phone lines, which are spotty in fires.
Too many people immigrating into California both legal and illegal.
This population bomb never seems to be discussed.
There are people living everywhere now in hills and valleys that not too long ago were empty.
Another pressing issue is water shortages. Can Cali keep piling on more and more humans? Unlikely.
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It is the nature of California to burn.
Then along come far too many humans who want far too many things because they are constantly assaulted by far too much sales and marketing which doesn't give hoot about life on Earth and is only doing it for the money they have been marketed to as the way to "happiness".
Humanity will only survive this mess if we finally decide to grow up and tell ourselves the truth about life and its very real limits.
The party is definitely over.
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It will probably be the insurance industry that makes the ultimate decision about what can be built where.
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There is also the addition fuel from home safety design and material flaws that have increased the danger of Home fires. I recently read a report that Residential property planners, developers, architects, designers, builders, and material suppliers, in the last few decades, have been allowed the introduction of floor plan design flaws (open floor plans) and increased use of non- flame retardant materials that have reduced the amount of time residents have to escape home fires, even with fully functioning of smoke detectors, from 17 mins to 3 mins.
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The Chaparral Institute is dedicated to the preservation of SHRUB LAND? I've visited their webpage and conclude that California can only spared the destruction of human habitat at the hand of wildfires by OtatNE means.
Declare the entire State a National Memorial under the antiquities act. All current human residents may continue to stay on their property UNTIL WILDFIRES OR OTHER NATURAL PHENOMENA destroy habitability. Families could load up the SUV, tie granny to the roof carrier and begin an Eastward Migration.
Sound farfetched? Not if you consider that under Obama California's newest National Monument extends the entire length of its coastline into the Pacific a distance of 12 miles. The antiquity being protected - ROCKS.
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As a general contractor, I am familiar with the WUI- Wildland Urban Interface regulations that are a part of the California Building Code. I will be curious to see how homes built or remodeled to these standards fared in recent fires. I suspect that in the face of the ferocity of recent fires, they will be found inadequate. That is not to stay that these regulations, often expensive and inconvenient, are not of value. Code upgrades often follow catastrophes, like Hurricane Andrew, the Loma Prieta earthquake, and the Oakland Hills Fire of 1991. I hope there will be a thorough analysis.
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Southern California needs to draw a ring around growth and just stop - there is no water there at all, they are stealing it all from the Colorado, and using it for things like irrigating the freaking freeways. And stopj building in those dry as brush hills.
Planning a something that seems to be beyond humanities grasp.
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Lord there are a lot of comments from people who apparently have NEVER been to Southern California but who have some lovely ideas. A growth ring? There are communities with hundreds of thousands of people from San Francisco all the way to San Diego. Where would you like to draw the growth ring? And not building in the hills? Almost all of Los Angeles lies within a couple miles of hills or mountains. Look at a map.
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Finally...we have an article that highlights that fact that wildland fuels treatments (in forests as well as chaparral) are NOT a viable solution to fire-related home-loss problem!
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Claiming that brush control doesn't work because it fails in extreme fire weather is like saying that seat belts don't work because you will still die if you run into a bridge abutment at 60 miles an hour. Fire regulations, like any other safety regulations, aim to increase the odds of avoiding injury, not at keeping you totally safe.
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Fuel abatement rules and enforcement are inadequate statewide. I live in a mountainous, forested area near a city. Property inspections outside of the city line fall upon Cal Fire — when they have time to do them. After a brief look-see, Cal Fire employees hand over a sort of report card, noting areas in need of improvement. There is no follow-up or punishment if property owners don’t comply with Cal Fire suggestions. Consequently, you find too many private roads heavily overhung by trees, roads bordered by unmowed meadows, hillsides and ravines covered in tangled chaparral, and stands of invasive eucalyptus and acacia (both explosively flammable). You can be absolutely persnickety about limbing up and mowing on your own property, but if your neighbor does nothing to maintain his land you are stuck.
My multi-acre property is adequately groomed, but my neighbor has allowed a stand of very flammable weed trees to grow up to and over my fence. I can do nothing but hack back at them to the property line. Unfortunately, there is no regulation against a neighbor being a selfish jerk.
I would be so happy to see San Diego’s punitive system implemented throughout the state!
On larger properties landscape management is about more than maintaining a 100-foot perimeter of groomed, fire-suppressive planting around the house. You need to avoid the “fire ladder” phenomenon. Trees need to be limbed up and brush reduced even beyond that 100-foot buffer, especially next to roads.
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When eucalyptus ignites, it burns so thoroughly that afterward you see holes in the ground where the roots used to be. I have seen that after the Scripps Ranch fire. I don't know how the air gets in to support the fire, but it does.
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Flame resistant is simply not enough. Nearly every home burned in wild fires in California in the past year would have been classified a flame resistant,,, nearly every one of them. But, that is also a sales tool.
Flame resistant is a degree of protection,, and with multiple finishes, sidings, paint, trim, roofing,,, they can all be flame resistant,, but it only requires one of that huge number to fail,, and just a little bit And the entire house is gone and it takes the neighbor's with it.
Fireproof. Zero fuel. Roof can be tile, slate, even some heavier gauges of steel or copper would qualify. (Keep in mind there is perhaps a wood deck 1/24th of an inch under that steel.)
Concrete, brick, now you also get into realms of seismic resistance, aerogels, Aerated Autoclaved Concrete,, that should be one at the top of the list. steel siding, steel trim. The list is nearly endless.
However today, most exteriors can be lit with and ember,, and a blow torch??
Just good business for insurance companies.
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Metal roofs conduct heat to the wood underneath. They are not fire-resistant.
That is why I qualified that statement. Metal roofs can be fireproof if attached to metal trusses. or B spaced sufficiently out and away from any wood below, usually on metal spacers or purlins.
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Foamcrete, look up Youtube foamcrete or AKA aircrete, they add soap bubbles to cement and it comes out QUITE resistant to heat. And insulating for general comfort.
I like that, With the pool & cistern that protect alot of a house. older buildings thru out the Midwest used rooftop gravity tanks.
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this is really frightening and I am an seventy year old man in dalllas. if I thought I could do something to help I would come today. i had relatives who once lived in glendale, Pasadena, and places I no longer am sure of. but I am sure my bucket list starts with just driving up the coast highway north until I run out of gas or . . . does mr. trump understand what is really going on with the weather? i think about California everyday and wish i could help . . . really . . . William Wilson dallas texas
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What exactly do you think Mr. Trump is responsible for ? The weather? Really? It's his fault?
The real answer to southern California's wildfire problem is, and you're not going to like it: cut southern California's human population to a third, and the third that remains, cut their daily water consumption in half. Ideally this population reduction would be accomplished by relocation rather than massive slaughter.
That's what would really help. Nothing else will really help. But, for certain, that won't get done, so I guess the advice for southern California is: expect ever-increasing fires every year, and if you can't deal with that, move to another area.
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Lol. The wildfires weren't caused by over-consumption of water. A 6-year long drought and Santa Ana winds caused the fire. Not people watering their lawns. when NYC gets hit by yet another hurricane or blizzard are you okay with mass relocation?
Dear Cam,
Are you so sure that using up all that water in the ground doesn't help dry things out? In any case, NYC gets hit by hurricanes rarely, and blizzards several times a year, and property damage is usually pretty minimal. If NYC gets hit by the big earthquake that's supposed to hit California instead, then yes, I'll relocate, if I live through it.
The CA fires are harming people and the air much more than any climate change. If they were not so stupid to build with or what they should not, they would not have the problems they have with fires. Who would want to live in a land of mudslides, earthquakes, forest fires, crazy traffic, overly taxing, over expensive, no quality of life is beyond me.
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Have to agree: Much rather live in N.J. with the country's largest Superfund sites , ridiculous property taxes, awful weather and the state bird: mosquitos!
How harsh and insensitive! The neighborhoods that were reduced to ash and rubble in Santa Rosa were not wild land or even woodland interface. They were in town.
I am constantly saddened by the decline in civility on the NYT comment threads.
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Ah yes. That's why so many people have left California over the last decade to move to New Jersey, the quality of life. Why live in Pasadena or Palo Alto when you can live in Hoboken or Newark? Winter storms, unreal taxes, multiple tax entities just to be sure your nephew (the really dumb one) has a municipal job from which he can retire at 45 with disability), great politicians (and more great politicians), power outages, coastal flooding and did I mention taxes?
1
My heart goes out to those who have lost everything in our recent firestorms.
Covered with a pretty but incendiary mix of oaks and chaparral, our county illustrates the dilemma. Many of us live here because we want green rural surroundings. We will not remove our oaks though they threaten our and our neighbors' homes. This appears irrational, but most accept the risk because it seems small, and because we've learned that defensible space is an illusion in firestorms that sweep away entire neighborhoods even with cleared perimeters.
This rationale will be cold comfort if we lose our home in a traditional fire that ignited our roof from a beloved tree's flames. The imperfect solution is to keep planted landscaping distant, sparse, and fire-resistant, to roof our homes with less flammable materials, and to try to keep things wet when fire nears.
When the 70 mph winds and 3 percent humidity arrive, we will leave our hose running on the roof and grab kids, pets, and photos, and hope the house AND the oak survive.
Nothing short of moving to some mythical safe place is the perfect solution, but few of us will choose that. We will worry when it has gone too long without rain and the winds threaten, but gazing at our oak hills will calm us. We are all descendants of a thousand generations who have always sought the place where the land is peaceful and the wrath of God or Mother Nature or Cossacks is a distant threat.
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Jon, leaving the hose running on your house lessens the water pressure for others if you are on a shared system. If you are on your own well, the power outage that comes with wildfires will shut down your pumping. Even if you have gravity-flow water coming from a tank, you are depleting the water supply firefighters rely on. Not good. Are you counting on water from a swimming pool to defend your home?
And could stucco be an option? I grew up with stucco. I would think it to be quite fire hardy. That way you can keep your home and just cover it in a layer of cement.
The oaks are not the problem. It's all the non-native plantings such as eucalyptus and coniferous shrubs and pines which are planted because they grow quickly but are highly flammable.
Obviously local building codes need to require fireproof or at least fire resistant roofs, never wooden shingles. Similarly communities can actively monitor and actually enforce landscape requirements. Going forward we'll need to do it all in California.
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In areas I have lived with similar problem FIRE, the houses were all made of cinderblock often filled with concrete. ( my house all this and rebar every foot for tornado resistance and a brick wwalk way around the house with shrubs shorter than a meter), zero wood, no flammable materials, with existing wood house required to receive retro-upgrade of stucco on cement fiber-board, roofs of metal, Spanish tile, slate, even concrete roofs and similar. where grass could contribute to a fire decorative stones and a patio for several meters. Our pool was hooked up to our homes fire protection sprinkler - our 500gallon cistern provided external watering of the property - both for lowering water use / good housekeeping and sprinklers. My property also had concrete floors and a basement (whether due too tornados' or fire. a place to go - quickly.) i expect Government to create models, build and test them, and look for improvements. And enact them - without long phase in periods.
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Not sure how cinderblock walls filled with concrete will work in an area that also has earthquakes.
to bob . . . you sir have built an incredible home and should be proud. I just want to visit! what a house! ! . . . . seriously, best to you. William Wilson dallas texas
The only regulation that will prevent the mass destruction of homes and businesses by wildfire is to prohibit building them in areas that regularly burn to a crisp every 30-40 years. But as with homes and businesses built next to the ocean on the east coast and are then wiped out by recurring hurricanes, these type of regulations will never be passed, or enforced.
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Not sure that you realize that pretty much all of the West can burn. Would you argue for the same thing for areas that could floor or get hit by tornadoes?
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No, it's mostly the coastal chaparral. In the inland desert there is nothing to burn. The problem is the combination of wet winters, leading to dense growth, and dry summers and autumns that turn that growth to tinder.
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Between this story and the one about an insurance company's research in indestructible construction, living in caves once again doesn't sound so bad after all when considering the consequences otherwise and seems to make a lot of sense. It's all a mater of finding the right appointments for them. The perfect front door is all the king's castle really is apart from a stone barn for the cows and sheep.
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Sprinkler systems on homes is a bad idea. In addition to being extremely expensive to install and maintain, they’ll only protect the walls when the fire is literally knocking at the door. There are only 2 ways to prevent homes from burning in wildfires: keep the fire away from homes (by enforcing the clearing of vegetation) or keep the homes away from the fire (enforcing a strict ban on construction in areas prone to wildfires and offering residents of these areas to relocate).
Of course some homes will burn, but by effective prevention their number will be minimal.
It’s also important to consider insurances as an effective way to share the risk and damages.
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Most people are not aware that is a very hot fire — like the fire storms we have seen in California — the soft goods inside a house will ignite before the exterior does. A house can burn from the inside out.
Insurance companies do look at Google Earth images to determine whether a homeowner has maintained adequate brush clearance. I have been told of cases where fire coverage was challenged because of poor maintenance, although I know of none personally.
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Having grown up in California and spent many weeks there during visits to my family, I'm constantly astounded by the lack of awareness of climate-changing behavior. The number of huge trucks and SUVs is so prevalent that it's difficult for someone in a normal-sized car to back out of a parking place.
Public transport? No way -- that's just for the Mexican cleaning ladies.
Do these people not realize how their rampant consumerism contributes to global warming? Californians claim to be so into everything that is good for the environment, yet most of this involves selling and buying more unnecessary junk, often transported via CO2-spewing ships or planes from distant locations, in plastic wrapping.
To California (with greatest respect to Tom Petty): California's been good to me. Hope it falls into the sea.
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I disagree, while it is not environmental utopia, what I see in California, is not common in other states. in California everywhere you drive you see electric and hybrid vehicles (including taxis). Shoppers bring their own bags to the grocery stores (plastic bags are banned in most cities). Pollution standards for businesses are more stringent here. I could go on... Unlike NYC most urban centers (like L.A.) are spread out so it's not easy to cover these large areas with public transportation. But they are investing in light rail in L.A. which is heavily used (and not just by cleaning ladies). And FYI, consumerism is not unique to California. Although we have a long way to go, we are way more progressive on the environment than most states.
Um, most people here would love more public transit. But it's not something easily or cheaply done. And, it's actually happening. But you don't know much about it apparently. Yes, there are a lot of people with SUVs here, like there are everywhere else in this country. There are also lots of Priuses here too.
What nonsense. As a transplant who's lived here for 20 years, I know Californians have many flaws, but as a whole our environmental footprint is smaller than the vast majority of the country, which is impressive considering its economic output. I take public transportation to and from work every day, just like hundreds of thousands of people in the Bay Area. You can blame most of America for consumerism. Are there too many people in harm's way in California? Absolutely. But the same could be said of Florida and other places.
Possible steel or cement construction ought to be required. Steel sheathing over steel 2x4 is cheaper than wood and can look really nice in the hands of a good architect.
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Rooftop sprinklers, about 125 bucks on Amazon, seem like a reasonable idea to add/test.
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I would think a $125.00 sprinkler would be the kind you see in your grocery store in the vegetable displays section. for a house you would need larger pumps & larger reservoirs but it can be done. I can see where gravity tanks, that you used to see thru out the Midwest become popular again.
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Dear Ralph,
Sorry but that's short-sighted. If the tens of millions of residents all got rooftop sprinklers, after a couple of fire seasons, southern California would be out of water completely. Seems like a wasted effort, as everyone would then have to leave in order to survive.
The power goes out during wildfires. If the property relies on a well, there is no pumping. If the property has pressurized municipal water, the pressure goes down to a trickle because everyone is running water, including firefighters.
2
Insurance claims for the wine country fires exceeds $9 billion. The fires in southern California will cost even more. What would it cost to bury power lines and clear brush?
Isn't mitigation part of the infrastructure spending that we could afford if only Congress would stop giving huge tax cuts to corporations and the rich?
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20 years ago, when San Francisco buried power lines, it ended up costing nearly $4 million per mile.
There has been increased talk about burying power lines, but it gets awfully quiet when PG&E makes it clear that the cost burden will fall on consumers, not come out of PG&E profits.
1
It's all about who pays. The power companies' highest priority is return to the shareholders, not mitigation. In fact, poorly maintained lines are the most likely sources of ignition.
Somehow, because millions live on land that is arid or desert it is Congress that is at fault for tax cuts?! What infrastructure was enhanced under Obama? This class warfare and constant attacks on Red (or blue, depending on the person commenting), is less than productive. It's destructive. And what happened in CA has been going on for decades. It's getting worse - more costly - because CA is over populated and over built for a state that is mostly arid/desert.
Maybe CA, and other drought riddled states, should consider doing controlled burns on a regular basis like in South Africa. The "Smokey the Bear" campaign and prevention of (natural) fires that prevent massive buildup of fuel may well have backfired on some level.
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Controlled burns are done regularly in Calif. They can only be done where they can be controlled, though; difficult in rough terrain.
1
We do have controlled burns,..... and guess what goes out of control way too often to become out of control burns?
Really I have been studying foamcrete, AKA aircrete and it is adding soap bubbles to cement and turns out very heat resistant. It's also insulative so that it creates more comfort in the home. Lightweight enough to use as roofing material. I definitely will be covering everything in it. Chicken coop, goathouse, barns, trailer, rabbit houses, turkey house, pumphouse.
This article makes the case for proper regulations. Regulations aimed at wildfires seem to be an exercise in risk and loss reduction. The best way a resident of southern California can eliminate risks and losses from southern California wildfires is to move to Northern California. Otherwise, good regulations is the only way to go.
You're kidding, right? We just had one of the largest wildfires in history in Santa Rosa, CA where I live.
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Erm...no, IO. The entire state burns. Speaking as a resident of Northern California...
You have to use multiple strategies in addition to brush clearing around a house such as flame resistant roofing and siding.
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