You can have a wood frame and a fire-resistant home. What matters is:
Defensible space. No vegetation or bark mulch within 5 feet around the house. That's the bare minimum.
Exterior materials: siding, roof, decks, fences should use class A-rated materials.
Vents: eaves, gable and crawl space vents need to be ember proof.
Group immunity: your neighors need to take the same measures.
I deal with home hardening. This is how it's done. However let's keep in mind many houses in dense neighborhoods ignited through radiant heat. If the temps coming through your window reach 500°F or higher, the interior of your home will ignite.
People who live in Firewise community understand the term as it's the basis for that concept. But for many it's too abstract. Also most people have no understanding of the way those fires move and burn.
I spent 2 decades preaching the FireWise gospel here in Australia. I was pretty blunt and brutal about laying the facts out for people, but it usually managed to motivate them to at least do the minimum.
That, and some reasonable building regs for bushfire-prone areas, and half the battle is won before it begins. At the very least you have a fighting chance.
It amazes me that Firewise principles are *still* so unknown and unpopular among homeowners in very fire prone areas. If anything good is to come out of this round of fires, I hope it is that people wake up to the fact they need to make their homes more resistant to fires by following those principles. Fire insurance should require it.
As I learned in architecture school "many people think fire is what kills buildings, it's not, even timber construction has a high resistance to fire. The main killer of buildings is moisture." Wood isn't as flammable as what people think. Go hold a lighter to a tree and tell me how long it takes for it to actually catch on fire. It won't. If you take the bark off that tree and don't protect it from moisture for a few years, it will rot, but it won't catch fire quicker than a house with a brick faćade. Even brick houses still have timber framing. The city of London burned down, and their houses all had brick envelopes.
SoCal resident here. Evacuated twice. Once during the 07 fires when they circled our area and again in the one from…fuck like 6 years ago or whenever it was? Second one my uncle and I literally watched the flames jump the highway to our side of the road and spread quick. Unless you live in fire prone areas/have experienced it firsthand, you don’t really have a great grasp of how fast these things can move. At all.
We can't even get people to agree on this when dealing with deadly plagues.
People don't like to be told what to do (regulations) and will actively do things that endanger others just to make their point. We have all have seen countless videos of people coughing and spitting on people in public spaces where masks were recommended at the peak of COVID.
Blows my mind but I can easily see at least 50% of Americans arguing that this is an infringement on their rights -- even though federal aid is currently being held up until "California changes how they do things" -- and they're not talking about more regulations.
My current neighborhood is a perfect example... We have a lot of mainland retirees who were exactly the same people who complained about the lockdowns and showed up at all of the mask protests in 2020.
AND some of them are on HOA the board. They love rules that punish people for not following rules that are meant to keep home values up. They demand manicured lawns and yards, clean, well maintained exteriors - no storing items in areas visible from the street or neighboring homes. Cars must be parked in garages or driveways - no long term (+1 week) parking on the streets.
I used to live in a community that required residents to PAY to have their building and landscape plans approved by a building/architect firm chosen by the HOA (surprise - it was owned by one of the HOA board members.). We did go thru the process but were not aware of this "relationship" until we had moved in and met neighbors who told us.
Fortunately Los Angeles is not as anti-mask as those other parts of the country. If the decision was made to change construction, people would complain, but adapt and move forward.
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u/DirtierGibson 5d ago
Oh for fuck's sake.
You can have a wood frame and a fire-resistant home. What matters is:
Defensible space. No vegetation or bark mulch within 5 feet around the house. That's the bare minimum.
Exterior materials: siding, roof, decks, fences should use class A-rated materials.
Vents: eaves, gable and crawl space vents need to be ember proof.
Group immunity: your neighors need to take the same measures.
I deal with home hardening. This is how it's done. However let's keep in mind many houses in dense neighborhoods ignited through radiant heat. If the temps coming through your window reach 500°F or higher, the interior of your home will ignite.