It will only take ten years if the lawyers get out of the way, and the City of Santa Rosa decides to specify noncombustible framing materials. I built 300 houses in Kobe, Japan, after the 1995 earthquake, but the fire that came afterward caused most of the 6,000 deaths. Water and gas lines broke, incinerating the occupants. The people who moved in loved the fact that they were built from light gauge steel. The homes were completed and occupied by May 1995.
In Santa Rosa, the culprit was less the brush and trees than the wood framing, as in Kobe and prior California fires. A typical US home contains about 20 tons of wooden two by fours, floor joists, and trusses: perfect fuel, in other words. Coffey Park is also a wind tunnel, with high density.
The City could speed up the process by specifying noncombustible materials such as steel, masonry, or concrete. Alternatively, they could follow the absurd examples of the governments of Oakland, Malibu, and San Francisco, which also experienced big fires, and welcome the two by four brigade. A macabre bonus is clearcutting more disappearing local forests.
My friend lost her house in Coffey Park, and she is waiting to see what will happen. If Santa Rosa does the right thing, it could be a model for the whole state, and we could join the rest of the world, which generally prohibits flammable homes in cities. Moscow and London learned. Maybe Santa Rosa will be next. I can help,
[email protected]
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"The Trump administration is requesting that the 2020 census include questions about immigration status. There are fears this could lead to a massive undercounting of the California Latino population, which could have consequences ranging from the reapportionment of legislative seats to the distribution of federal funds. The decennial census has not asked all respondents whether they were citizens since 1960. [The New York Times]"
Sounds like a great idea. We shouldn't be counting illegal "immigrants" and giving them representation any more than we should be counting tourists, NAFTA truckers, cruise ship employees, etc.
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Ten years to rebuild? Today's Santa Rosa paper features a story about the first house being rebuilt on the old foundation. The walls will be up in a week. It's a mystery to me how it got designed, reviewed, and permitted so quickly, but there you are.
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I wish I could afford to move back to the Bay Area, where I was born (Sequoia Hospital, RWC)--I moved to Oregon last fall--but even burnt out land is too expensive.
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We had a house fire that burned to the ground - the stuff you have to go through in order to rebuild is not user-friendly, and in CA is a pain in the rear to deal with. Your property tax changes (for example), getting a contractor is ridiculous in most cases, and in an area where they are all being used must be impossible. I can totally understand the decision to take the money and go elsewhere. We did.
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Did your insurance company make a payment to you to "go elsewhere?" I ask because mine, State Farm, says they will only "cut a check" to me if I were to rebuild my destroyed house right where it was. If I wanted to leave and buy or build a house elsewhere, they wouldn't pay me anything.
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Thank you so much for the "And Finally....." I clicked on the link to see the William M. McCarthy sampler collection at the California State Archives. What a treat to see the world from my parents and grandparents eyes, as well as many places I visited as a child in the 1940s, 50s and 60s in California and beyond. Makes me wonder which one of my cousins has the mother load of photos and old postcards, labeled just the same, both B&W and colored, that I use to escape into at my grandma's home overlooking lake Merritt in Oakland. Wonderful and so grateful to see this after a glorious sunrise here in San Francisco.
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It makes sense for a lot of people to cash out and move elsewhere. Given building costs of $200 per square foot the houses that go back in will likely be much nicer than the ones that burned down.
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More like $300+ a square foot.
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I built a tract in Yucca Valley, California, for $74 a square foot in 2008, though that was hard construction costs only.
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Yeah, I guess it’s truly “bear land“ in most cases except for the occasional fireplace (and judging from most of the photos, there aren’t too many fireplaces; I guess most people have..... had electric or propane heat)