Fire and wind are sure to shape the future of Los Angeles as the world warms up.
Los Angeles started taking steps to prepare. But there are lessons that can learn from other cities that adapt to extreme weather conditions of fire: yard management; care of neighbors; facilitating getting out of damage.
One big challenge, among many, is that plans like these should be widely adopted. One home is just safe as in the neighborhood. “If your neighbor does nothing, and you, if that home burns it, will create so bright warmth, it will also burn you,” said Kimiko Barrett of Headwaters Economics in Bozeman, Mont., A company that advises cities about the reduction of risk from fire damage.
Neighbors are important. Construction codes and zoning rules are important. But maybe most of all, money is important. Construction for the time of fire can be expensive, and it is often beyond the reach for many homeowners who live in communities prone to fires.
Look hard in the landscape
Boulder district, Colorado, has learned some major lessons from recent fires.
Pine needles and debris around the house quickly spread the flames. Short shrubs explode in fire. In fact, county officials call the spruce “gasoline plants”. The enveloped wood filled under the deck can burn and destroy the house.
The county spent several years persuading people to clean the shards and torn spruce. Voters agreed to increase traffic taxes to help him pay.
Los Angeles has a problem for problems: Palms. Many types of palm trees, once it sets on fire, are very difficult to extinguish. In areas prone to fires should be Avoiding completely, According to the Los Angeles Fire Unit.
San Diego County forbids Green – even shrubs – Around the perimeter of five feet of a building and requires that the tree canopy be at least 10 feet.
Berkeley, California, sends fire inspectors to its most commonly turned fourth fire to throw out the danger signs: a dead brush less than five meters from the house; a flammable vegetation leaning over the fence line and threatens the adjacent estate; High shrubs that can send a flame that runs a tree.
There are limitations. The living oaks are protected by law, which means that they cannot be reduced. And local communities like Berkeley are still waiting for state officials to issue regulations to implement the law of 2023 intended to minimize fire damage from the fire by prescribing the standard of landscape management. The city was supposed to tighten its regulations in the coming weeks, demanding from homeowners to hold a five -foot fireproof perimeter around each house in the most popular neighborhoods on the hills. This means that there is no shrub, no propan tank, without wood. Violations will be punished; The City Council has yet to determine how much.
“If I manage to hold a lighter and can smoke and flame, it should not be there,” said Colin Arnold, an assistant fire chief responsible for the most popular areas in the city on the edge of the wilderness, known as an urban interface of wild areas
Build a safer house
The houses are flammable, but it is possible to make them less burning.
Concrete, stucco and constructed tree are better than old -fashioned wood frames. Several architects, including Abeer Sweis, in Santa Monica, are working with compressed soil, also known as Rammed Earth, who also offers fire protection and avoiding concrete emissions. Roofs made of clay tiles, concrete or metal are well kept flames. Laminated glass windows can reduce the radiant heat pressing the house during the fire.
The design is also important. Eaves and blankets can capture rush, which is why architects build in areas prone to fire like them to be sealed. At a time when insurance insurance is becoming more and more difficult to get in fires prone to fires, Mitchell Rocheleau, an architect based in Irvine, California, says the fixing of your home is a “physical insurance policy”.
The openings are frequent culprits. . Low -budget repairs, such as fireflies resistant on mesh screens, can prevent large haste to fly, but they are not always effective, said Mrs. Sweis, which is why it prefers the openings that are lined with material that melts into the heat and closes.
Construction codexes are increasingly a mandate of uncomparable roofs and side tracks. (California is among the strictest.) However, the problem is that most of the homes in the United States are built before modern construction codex. An upgrade of the existing fire age house means to get rid of the flammable side tracks and roofs. That is a set of proposal.
Boast of improvements
Imagine this as a fire version of Keeping Up with Joneses.
The Boulder County has a way to get homeowners from county programs, Wildfire Partners, for fire practices such as junking junipers, selecting less burning shrubs, installation of a fire-resistant roof, or a hustle of fire-resistant sealing.
The certification comes with the sign of the courtyard to display. This is a way to encourage others in the neighborhood to adopt similar practices.
There is also a potential reward. Certification can be a way to not lose homeowner’s insurancewhich is increasingly risk in many communities in the American West. “The cost of remodeling is very real,” said Ashley Stolzmann, a county commissioner. “The cost of loss of insurance is also very real.”
Upgrade the lines of dangerous transmission lines
Auxiliary lines and utility pillars are responsible for some of the destructive fires in California in recent years.
Much of that infrastructure was built in the 1960s and 1970s and needs to be improved urgently. Municipal services have faced a number of lawsuits after some of these fires, including in recent days when the residents of Altadene are Sued Edison from southern California claiming that the equipment of the utility service embarked on a fire Eaton, which destroyed 5,000 buildings in the area. (Edison said he was investigating the cause of the fire.)
The range of repairs is possible, from fire -resistant columns to the burial of electricity lines (very expensive) to cover the protective layer (less expensive but less safe).
The Law on Duplicate Infrastructure has allocated $ 3.5 billion to upgrade an electric network. It is a fraction of $ 250 billion in the latest Los Angeles fire.
Road rethinking
Cul-de-Sacs and narrow winding streets are a sign of many quarters pressing against the wilderness, including Berkeley Hills. This is a problem when people need to get out, and the first answers should come in.
“There are no new roads anywhere,” Mr. Arnold said. “It’s a very densely charged community built without evacuation in mind.”
If you cannot expand the roads, you can comply with the first subjects to enter and exit. Los Angeles Fire Department Prohibits the parking of the street In some quarters of the windy days, when the risk of fire is high.
Rancho Santa Fe, a rich suburb of San Diego, tried to solve the problem, maintaining most of his housing roads at all times. Not Street parking is allowed If the street is not wide enough for fire trucks to enter and exit.
Know when to leave
The fires are long common in hot, dry Southeast Australia. But no one revived their people like a black Saturday fire that broke out in Victoria in February 2009. The Blazes killed more than 170 people and led to the rewriting of the State Protocol for the evacuation.
In the days of high risk of fire, people living in forested communities are encouraged to leave their homes before there are signs of smoke and flames. Warnings are broadcast on television.
The residents are encouraged to have an official application to prepare the state of the state, which emphasizes which areas should empty when. The view of the app recently on Thursday morning proved to be 10 notifications throughout the countryFrom the warning “Leave immediately” in some places that you “oversee the conditions” somewhere else.
Los Angeles residents, in contrast, have received the wrong warnings about the Evaculation of the SMS with some of the worst fire days. He was more reliable A private application Built by a non -profit group.
“We want people to make good decisions before the fire, not bad decisions during the fire,” said Luke Hegerty, a spokesman for the State Control Center.
Several schools and fire stations have been designated as a community shelter facilities. And for those people who remain behind until the fire reaches their homes, there is a wicked Bushfire place of the last resort. Usually it is an open field without trees or buildings that could burn. But as the County Fire Department is greatly warning on its website, Bushfire on the last resorts “does not guarantee security.”
Build more homes
Los Angeles has long faced an acute need for more accommodation. For years, she has satisfied demand by allowing development in areas prone to fires and allowing homeowners to renovate after the fires have broken through these areas.
The latest fires outlined the need. It is estimated that 10,000 homes have been destroyed, leaving tens of thousands of people who need shelter and increase rent and home prices on one of the most expensive real estate markets in the country.
And so, among the hardest elections that Los Angeles now face is where it will build homes that will not easily increase in flames.
“You have two options, and both are politically very difficult, especially immediately after the fire,” said Michael Manville, a professor of urban planning at the University of California Los Angeles. One is to limit development in areas prone to fires. The other is to enable denser accommodation in less dangerous areas in flat parts, in quarters zoned for family homes. That was “political non-stain,” Mr. Manville said.
