Help me wrap my brain around this: Houses lost in the fire shouldn't have been built there?

Question

I have seen some people here on YA, and even an op-ed article, saying that most of the houses lost in the fire were in "dangerous" locations and shouldn't have been built in the first place.

http://news.yahoo.com/s/usatoday/20071026/cm_usatoday/differentnaturaldisastersameriskyhumanhabits;_ylt=AhkeQOkJVJvjlLprO7rjwuqs0NUE

In So Cal, Nor Cal (where I live,) and the central valley, nearly every city and town is surrounded by fire-prone grasslands, chapparral, etc. Unless we blanket the state with houses, retail, and asphalt, there will always be some houses on the edge of a city or town, next to flammable material. Are we supposed to only build in the few moist areas, like San Francisco (already pretty much built to maximum capacity)? Should we be moving to houseboats on the ocean? Or do you agree, that new developments are in bad locations?

Answer 1

There are certainly things you can do to lessen the risk of fire. Use of better fire-resistant materials, for instance. Keeping dry grass/brush cleared away from your house is another. Even then, there's always a chance of something bad happening.

There is no 100% "safe" place to live. Fire and flood are two common problems. There's also earthquakes, mudslides, sinkholes, avalanches, tornadoes, hurricanes, tsunamis, high winds, hail, thunderbolts, and lightening.

Answer 2

People need to do a better job of brush clearance. It suppose to be 200 feet all around. Which is a little hard when you have pine trees leaning against your home. In all fairness. It's pretty hard to protect your home when you have some maniac setting fires on very windy days. You see the cities are well established and people went to those types of areas to build. The views are great but they also get visitors in the form of Bears and Mountain Lions. Plus if you like Horses (and many do) you have to go outside the city limits due to zoning laws.

Answer 3

I personally believe that building anything anywhere in California is a bad idea. The whole state is either
A) on a fault line
B) In a flood/mudslide prone area
C) Close to fire hazards.

I'm sure it's a gorgeous place, but as for living there, no way. It's just too risky.


Buy property in Utah. It'll be the West Coast before long.




Sorry about the fires there though. That truly sucks for the folks who choose to live there.

Answer 4

i watched hours of news, and was struck by one thing-- house after house right up next to hillsides did not have brush cleared, surrounded by trees and scrubs, no tile roofs, no fire truck access.

then there are other communities spared because they were built and maintained with brush fires in mind.

People just buy the houses, then don't zone it, they don't build it, they don't' insure it.

People who live there and are not prepared for brush fires is just stupid.

Everyone should be prepared for a fire, regardless of where you live. You should have a fire extinguisher in the kitchen, working smoke detectors, an escape plan.

My brother's house burned to the ground from a kitchen fire. It took the FD 20 minutes to arrive, in that short time, the house was gone.
just like our earthquake preparedness kits, we should think about a much more likely possibility.

Answer 5

Let me help you with the brain wrap: There are many good, safe places to build homes in California (I live in one of them). Unfortunately, two things get in the way of safety. (1) People want to live in unsafe places with great views/location/ privacy. (2) Developers couldn't care less about safety, they only care about money. So they build flammable houses in fire-prone areas because it's cheap and the houses will sell.

Another issue is that people who live in fire-prone areas are not willing to create defensible space around their homes. I see a lot of homes in the Sierra foothills that have neither sprinklered (lush, non-flammable) landscaping near the house, nor native trees cut back far enough so fire can't jump to the house. Whether this is money-saving strategy or a desire to "fit into the natural landscape", it invites fire damage.

Answer 6

I see where you are going with this, but this isn't like the people who build in a flood plain or 2 feet from the ocean. Shrubery grows...You could buy a house and several years later the adjoining land is covered up with burnable brush. It's a clearance problem..and it is a continuous and on going problem...

Answer 7

Let's see, there are earthquakes, mudslides, fires, smog and drought conditions but they continue to build? Sounds to me like the developers need to be rained in. Where I live we put an end to urban sprawl and insist that there be "green spaces" between cities.
Can't for the life of me understand wanting to live in Cali with all that. sure the weather's good but it almost seems like nature is trying to tell you folks something. When do you suppose you might take a listen?

Answer 8

What we should do is to have a ring of farms, lakes, trees, etc., around each city or group of towns, separating the buildings from the brush, chaparral, etc. This is how Pepperdine survived the Malibu fires.

Answer 9

And one of the worse places of all is Malibu. I do not wish any ill on the residents there, and fortunately, they can apparently afford these catastrophes, but my gosh! Whether their homes are on fire, flooded, sliding down hills, filled with mud, I always wonder, is somebody trying to tell them something?? All of Malibu should be a state park.

Answer 10

The problem with Malibu is that it's an errosional coastline. That whole area is slowly slipping into the ocean. People don't realize they are building their homes on unstable land.