
Built to Burn - prostoalex
https://99percentinvisible.org/episode/built-to-burn/
======
viraptor
Sounds like they could learn lots from Australia. Controlled burns are a norm
every summer, CFA has pretty much everything from the article in their advice
([https://www.cfa.vic.gov.au/plan-prepare/how-to-prepare-
your-...](https://www.cfa.vic.gov.au/plan-prepare/how-to-prepare-your-
property)), there are requirements for water tanks on new properties in many
places. CFA mostly acknowledges the bush fire and lets it burn.

They did the same mistake with fuel buildup years ago, but it seems the
transition to new system was much quicker.

~~~
epilogue
Along with the majority of houses in suburban and rural areas having metal
(Colourbond) roofs and brick walls means that the issue of embers discussed in
the article would not be as dangerous to homes.

~~~
el_benhameen
Brick walls are unfortunately not a good choice in earthquake-prone
California.

~~~
eftychis
What you are forgetting here is that people and the market build houses with a
short lifespan in mind. They could as easily build new houses with reinforced
concrete. And if there was that much earthquake consideration you would see
support structures and dampeners as part of the regulation in non-trivial
buildings ([https://resources.realestate.co.jp/buy/earthquake-
building-c...](https://resources.realestate.co.jp/buy/earthquake-building-
codes-and-technology-in-japan/)) (Also see regulation in Greece and Italy --
[https://earthquaketrack.com/p/greece/recent](https://earthquaketrack.com/p/greece/recent)).

The real estate market forces cheap wooden houses. It is not tradition or
earthquakes... I feel here in California there is dangerous complacency
regarding earthquakes ([https://www.economist.com/united-
states/2018/02/03/america-i...](https://www.economist.com/united-
states/2018/02/03/america-is-not-prepared-for-the-next-big-earthquake)).
People fear them but the rarity has transformed the fear into wishful thinking
and avoidance.

------
rcarmo
Living in a country where pretty much _everything_ has been built out of
brick/stone/concrete for a long while now (with clay shingles), I find US
building codes to be baffling.

Not criticizing, mind you, since clay shingles are still supported by wooden
beams in older detached homes and those go out too in forest fires (which we
also have, on a yearly basis and with tragic results) - I just don’t get the
rationale for small homes to be built out of wood these days - is it cost?

(Edit for typos)

~~~
chrisseaton
Americans don't believe me when I tell them my relatively recent regular UK
house is built out of brick!

They say things like 'it's a wooden frame with a brick facade, right?' or 'I'm
sure the supporting structure isn't brick.' No it's brick. It's all brick. The
walls on all sides in every room are about 30cm of solid brick with plaster
directly on top. Even the internal ones.

If you want to run a new light cable or something you'll be using a hammer and
chisel to make a channel to put it in.

~~~
0xffff2
I don't think you could do this in California due to earthquake-related parts
of the building code.

~~~
erikpukinskis
Yeah, a brick house becomes a sandcastle in an earthquake.

~~~
luckydata
We had the technology to build earthquake-proof houses for quite a while
without needing to use timber framing which has all kinds of downsides.

[http://dme.engin.umich.edu/stubbornstructures/](http://dme.engin.umich.edu/stubbornstructures/)

The only advantage is cost and speed of execution, they call them McMansions
for a reason.

~~~
abraae
Timber also has its upsides, including locking up carbon, and being easy to
modify after the initial build.

~~~
exolymph
Locking up carbon? The trees are produced / harvested according to demand, no?
I think I may be misunderstanding your point in noting this.

~~~
abraae
Dry, moisture-free wood is about 50% carbon by weight.

So if the panelised timber frame superstructure for an rectangular two storey
house of 150m2 is approximately 14 metric tonnes, you're locking up 7 tonnes
of carbon for the life of the building (minus of course the carbon emitted to
plant, prune, fell, transport, mill, treat, get the wood to site, install it
etc.).

If you can use more timber through the construction, all the more effect.

~~~
luckydata
Doesn't the same amount of carbon stays locked the same in a tree in the
ground? I don't understand why building with wood helps in this case. There's
plenty of space to grow more trees...

~~~
abraae
There's not an infinite amount of space to grow trees actually. A decent
forest needs the right climate, water. Economically forestry must compete with
other land uses such as grazing, orchardry, etc.

It takes pinus radiata about 25 years to reach maturity. Then it can be turned
into buildings/ houses, and the carbon locked up in that structure, which can
be e.g in the city or suburbs- somewhere there will never be suitable for
forestry.

And then the forest can be replanted and the virtuous cycle begins again.

tldr; locking carbon up in timber gives more flexibility than just relying on
standing forests.

------
JohnJamesRambo
The sheer stupidity of having a wood shingle roof in a place with the Santa
Ana winds astounds me. That’s wasn’t against code?

This was such a fascinating article. Classic government intervention, focusing
on large projects that are ineffective and not backed by current science
instead of direct interaction with the problem door to door in lots of smaller
expenditures that would actually be effective.

~~~
maire
Wood shingled roofs are currently against code. The wood shingle example was
from 1980. Current code even disallows wood decks.

My childhood home burned in the Oakland hills fire - and it had a tile roof --
so roofing material is not enough. Having a defensible space also seems key.

On a related note - I watched a youtube video on a woman driving up and down
the streets of Paradise to show people if their homes survived. The homes that
survived all seem to be surrounded by a watered lawn. This reinforces
maintaining a defensible space is key to survival.

~~~
thaumaturgy
In this particular disaster, there are more factors than defensible space.
Some well-maintained, well-built homes with large yard spaces are ash now;
other homes with no defensible space at all came out unharmed, including one
with several cars in the yard and a 5 gallon can labeled "flammable" right
against the garage.

Removing fuel from on and around your home is a good idea regardless. Beyond
that, I don't think most of us are qualified to guess on the fire behavior in
Paradise (or Redding, or Napa, or Santa Rosa...).

I will say that of the buildings still standing in Paradise, a
disproportionate number of them seem to be brand new construction (<5 years
old).

~~~
RosanaAnaDana
I don't know if you've ever been to or through Paradise, but its very similar
to many foothill communities in the north and south Sierras, in the sense that
the town was effectively built into the surrounding forests. The forest in
that area is primarily Ponderosa, and pretty decent sized ones as well. In
this sense, and I can speak from authority as I've spent far more time in
Paradise than I would have preferred (reasons below), pretty much the entire
town had negative defensible space. Most of the houses in Paradise are (were)
fully surrounded by 50-120 foot pondos and under a closed canopy.

Likewise, most of the new construction was built on the ridge (Skyway) between
Paradise and Chico, which is primarily California live oak and grassland.

A __huge __mitigating factor in all of this however, is the level of poverty
in and around the (former?) town of Paradise.

Not sure how well this has been represented in the media, but Paradise as a
community is poor as shit. There are just about -shit_all- jobs (outside the
hospital) in that area that don't involve selling cigarettes and lotto
tickets. Paradise, Concow, Magalia, pretty much some of the poorest areas of
California I know of. Many of the families in that area lived on properties
that had been built over several generations, handed down from gold-rush era
mining claims. These aren't people who keep insurance on anything. Nor are
they the kind of people who concern themselves with maintaining a defensible
space around their homes.

~~~
thaumaturgy
I stayed in Paradise for a handful of days around a month ago. Nice people and
town, and I'm really saddened to see what's happened to them.

As the article points out, there are some interesting areas where there are
green or just lightly singed trees surrounding homes that are totally gone.
Certainly there are also a lot of trees that clearly went up like torches.
There was also a place where the fire came halfway up the front yard and then
just ... stopped. If I remember right, that yard was mostly bare dirt though
with just a light layer of pine needles, which don't burn well. Every place
around it was completely gone, and I mean _completely_. They had a neighbor's
house all of about twenty feet from their house. Neighbor's house is just
dust, the wall on this house wasn't even darkened.

The new construction I was talking about were individual buildings or, in one
case, a small series of retail spaces. Everything surrounding them was just
ash.

So there may be some merit to what the article's saying. It kind of explains
some of the oddities I've seen. I didn't get to survey the area in detail
before it was destroyed though.

I've been out there one full day so far on the ground in a SAR team, and I'm
scheduled to be out there again Sunday through Wednesday in overhead. I wish I
could be out there more but my day job is being a bit difficult right now.

------
Theodores
The lessons of the Great Fire of London still apply. Yet discussion moved on
to this idea that 'natural fires' should not be suppressed as this causes too
much dead wood to build up on the forest floor meaning that the 'natural fire'
burns too intensely.

That massive fire in Yellowstone way back in 1988 was when this new thinking
set in. From then on the Forest Service could be blamed for poor management
and allowing this kindling to build up, resulting in truly catastrophic fires.
It was a seductive way of thinking and whilst everyone was thinking it the
basic lessons of The Great Fire of London were ignored.

In The Great Fire of London the problem was the wind and embers being blown
across town to start new fires. This overwhelmed the authorities of the time.
The solution was to build houses with non-flammable materials. In that way an
ember landing on a house would not cause another fire to start up.

The other detail of note was the use of parapets. In London roofs are always
behind a parapet, so, if a house or property does go up in flames then the
roof will not fall off the house but be contained within the four walls. In
this way adjacent properties, e.g. across the street, don't go up in flames
too.

Nowadays building codes in London expect a property to not go up in flames
even if the adjacent house is fully ablaze. This is buying time, clearly there
is expectation that the adjoining fire gets put under control within a few
hours. It doesn't seem that in California there is this thinking, which is
understandable if you do have lots of garden and some distance to the adjacent
house. But I bet that the first people to populate London thought that way
too, they never imagined the pasture land next to their house would become a
housing estate some centuries later.

Another small matter is that of sprinkler systems. Architects do not like
sprinklers even though they do a fantastic job of suppressing fire. They also
design atriums with no vents in the roof specifically there to let hot air out
if there is a fire. This is considered old fashioned thinking by the entire
architecture business, they check the checkboxes on building codes at minimal
cost and don't think from first principles about how to make a building work
within its environment.

~~~
thedufer
City fires are completely different from forest fires. For example, the
parapets you're so focused on don't make much sense when houses are 100s of
feet apart, as is the case in a lot of places that are burning.

Also, London is a different place than California. Buildings in California
aren't built with wood for no reason; they do it to withstand earthquakes.
There's a big difference between just fireproofing a building and
simultaneously fire- and earthquake-proofing a building - the latter is far
more difficult and expensive.

I don't see that many of the lessons from the Great Fire of London apply to
the problem in California.

~~~
Theodores
I did write that the parapets of London were just a detail, not the focus. I
also mentioned that conurbations attract more people over time and land that
was once sparsely populated soon gets crowded. In America this might seem
unimaginable but if the internal combustion engine dies then so does American
suburbia. Those 100ft exclusion zones are not going to last forever however
you look at it. It could therefore be prudent to build your house so that if
it goes up in flames it is not going to turn the whole town to ash, even if
the whole town is not there yet.

My general point regarding the Great Fire of London being that fire prevention
has been worked out a long time ago. Fire prevention with earthquakes is
actually well worked out too. Despite American exceptionalism California is
not special. Half of mankind lives in an earthquake zone. The reason for this
is that the most fertile land happens to be in earthquake zones, you need some
volcanic goodliness to make it so.

I accept the point made by the lumber lobby that wood is a great material for
building houses. Wood can be marketed as fantastically earthquake proof if
your quarterly sales matter more than the dreaded Spotted Owl. But is wood
really what you want for a house that is an actual home? To last for
generations? What if you live in Italy where earthquakes happen but there is
no lumber lobby just up the road?

Time is money and convenience is king. It's the American Dream. There is no
need to be encumbered by things like sensible building codes if there is no
past and no imaginably sustainable future, just the urgent, dramatic now.

The culture of consumerism plays its part too. If you are a property
speculator in a drought-stricken earthquake zone where fires ravage the
countryside every single summer (unless it happens to be an el-Nino year when
flooding takes over) then it could be hard to find a market for homes built to
last for generations.

Why do that when you can flog a slapped together McMansion with double garage
side portions for much more profit? It only has to last until the next
boom/bust inflection, savings + loan scam or catastrophic 'act of god'.
Hollywood's back lot sets are more substantial.

I very much like Californian vernacular architecture however I am far more
likely to be taking pictures of the scenery rather than of any house when in
California. The truly beautiful houses with character are outnumbered by seen-
it-before identikit dwellings or those McMansions that have no taste
whatsoever. I have actually got lost in several Californian built up areas due
to the lack of unique landmarks. I haven't had that problem anywhere else,
even Soviet era centrally planned housing can be navigated without feeling
like you are stuck in some maze.

In summary, fires don't care if they are in California or anywhere else. The
short-term-ist consumerist outlook that goes with the territory is the
problem, not some unique combo of fires and earthquakes.

------
jefftk
_> Fire has no boundaries and no preference for where it burns_

That's a weird thing to say: there are definitely places that are more fire
prone than others.

~~~
8bitsrule
Been a couple days but, IIRC, that statement followed an explanation of why
embers and certain kinds of roof design don't go together. (don't think it was
intended to be generic)

------
8bitsrule
The second part of this (podcast, see Episodes 317 & 318 in
[http://feeds.99percentinvisible.org/99percentinvisible](http://feeds.99percentinvisible.org/99percentinvisible))
goes into changes in Montecito, CA. IIRC, their last exposure to wildfire
resulted in very few house losses.

------
gdubs
The Paradise Fire might have been an entirely different beast than the
survivable events that are primarily discussed in this article. (I still think
this is a great article; bookmarking for reference.)

But the Paradise fire moved _so_ fast, and _so_ tall, I don’t think anything
stood a chance. Look at, for instance, the Safeway in the town — completely
demolished.

Flew over the area the other day — got a first hand look at the smoke from
above which we’ve all been breathing in down in the South Bay all week;
tragic, devastating event.

Edit: primarily talking about the stuff related to landscape and building
design. I’m in favor of controlled burns, but it’s not trivial to start doing
it given just how much fuel is built up in California.

~~~
pixl97
>I don’t think anything stood a chance. Look at, for instance, the Safeway in
the town

Eh, I would disagree. Pull up google maps and drop in street view. This town,
in the middle of fire country, is filled with pine trees. Many of them have
ladder fuels under them. Tall fires happen because of crown fires.

------
sunstone
Speaking with a guy from a forestry service who studied fire impact mitigation
strategies, apparently the cheapest, effective approach is for each home to
have an emergency water sprinkling system that covers the entire house and as
much of the property as the owner wants to preserve.

Sure there's a cost to this but is it really so much different that having
sprinklers in high rise residential buildings?

------
cronix
It seems a sprinkler system on the roof, in addition to the yard, would go a
long way in terms of embers. Just keep everything saturated?

~~~
dyyni
As far as I know California is already short on water. Would a sprinkler in
every house system be sustainable or even possible in such conditions that
everything burns?

~~~
pixl97
You would have to have a pressurized water storage tank at each house. It
would be quite expensive and have a lot of maintenance for how rare the usage
would actually be.

------
luckydata
The whole way houses and cities are built in California is to blame for this
tragedy (not discounting the effects of global warming of course).

It's high time California realizes building wood framed boxes with walls of
compressed paper with no defensible space between the wilderness and the
houses is a BAD idea and we start building with more sensible materials like
concrete, bricks and stone like Europe has been doing for centuries - because
it works.

~~~
pixl97
Eh, telling people to build with brick in earthquake zones is a bad idea.

Of course putting pine trees beside houses in fire zones is a bad idea too.

~~~
luckydata
Ever heard of concrete?

Also, there's plenty of earthquake resistant techniques you can apply to
masonry. Mediterranean houses are all built with steel-reinforced concrete and
bricks even now and there's all kinds of seismic activity over there.

[https://clay-wienerberger.com/expertise/brick-buildings-
for-...](https://clay-wienerberger.com/expertise/brick-buildings-for-seismic-
prone-areas)

------
thoughtexplorer
Hmm, I thought controlled burns were best practice and was being done. Is that
not the case?

~~~
maire
Controlled burns are best practice but are not being done. For federal land,
agencies have had their budgets repeatedly cut. This has left less money for
thinning and other prevention work. Fire fighting money comes from a different
"emergency" budget even though fires happen every year so it's not really an
emergency. For private land creating a defensible space is on the books but is
not being enforced.

~~~
rsync
"For private land creating a defensible space is on the books but is not being
enforced."

That depends on the area...

I am a volunteer firefighter in Marin County (basically San Francisco) and we
do defensible space consultations all summer and the paid firefighters of
Marin County do indeed drive around all summer writing fix-it sheets for
homeowners that are in the wildland-urban interface.

