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If you live in a single-family home, it’s probably MadeAt the very least, they have a wooden roof and/or deck. Older homes may also have wooden roofs and decks, and the decks may be neatly stacked with firewood and wicker furniture. Synthesis Carpets, curtains and sofas are spread throughout the house. The house is at risk of forest fires and could break out into a blaze at any moment. Embers occasionally smolder. Miles Ahead of the fire front, fire can fall onto your roof and ignite, penetrating vents and starting to burn the interior. Sparks can then fly from the house itself, and the radiant heat can be hot enough to ignite nearby homes. Soon, an entire neighborhood can be engulfed in flames.
In the past decade alone, wildfires have burned millions of acres of land and thousands of homes, primarily in the Western United States. So far, national and state efforts have focused on reducing wildfire risk in forests. But trees aren’t the only fuel that fuels wildfires: our homes are too. As fires grow in size, intensity and frequency, experts say we need to address wildfire risk closest to home: our own homes and neighborhoods.
be Report A report released last year by Columbia University’s Climate Institute and Headwaters Economics, an independent nonprofit research group based in Montana, called “Missing the Point,” found that the most effective strategies for reducing wildfire risk in communities are not just strategies that focus on forests, but also strategies that build and retrofit homes and neighborhoods. But the analysis found that in the U.S., strategies to manage the built environment have received less funding and policy support than traditional approaches that focus on what’s happening in forests.
Why does American society pay less attention to wildfire risks in its homes than to its forests? And why are state and local building codes more common in flood- and earthquake-prone areas but not in wildfire-prone areas? Kimiko Barrett, a researcher at Headwaters Economics and co-author of the report, says it all comes down to the nation’s expectations of the Forest Service, which was tasked with suppressing wildfires after the Great Fire of 1910. fire 3 million acres burned Across Explosions occurred in Washington, Idaho and Montana, killing at least 85 people, authorities said shortly after. The Beginning In 1905, the Forest Service took on a new and urgent mission: to put out forest fires before they became too big. For decades, the Forest Service and other land management agencies had routinely used regularly funded airplanes, bulldozers, and other expensive means to put out fires as soon as they started. State, tribal, and federal land management agencies continued to use hand, machine, or fire extinguisher techniques. Planned fire.
10 years Plan The Forest Service’s recommendations call for further removal of these flammable fires and reducing combustible fuels on up to 50 million acres of land. But unless leaders find the funding and political will to renovate old homes and rethink where and how we build new ones, communities will continue to burn. “We assume that we can build homes in high-risk areas and that firefighters will show up and risk their lives to protect our homes,” Barrett says. “We never assume that our homes will be protected at that level from other hazards like earthquakes or floods or hurricanes.”
According to FEMA: one third American The boundary between wilderness and city In the West Indies, homes blend with forests and other vegetation. In the West Indies, the number of housing units built in the West Indies increased by nearly 50% between 1990 and 2020. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences The Journal argues that in California, rising home prices have been a major driver of migration to the West Indies since the 1990s, as rising home prices drive more people out of cities. Yet only California, Nevada, and Utah mandate statewide building codes that specifically address wildfire risk. California’s code is by far the most comprehensive: 40 percent of new homes in California have been built to the code since 2008. Unlikely They are more likely to burn down in a wildfire than homes built in 1990, the study found. analysis According to the National Bureau of Economic Research.
Good standards include everything from using fire-resistant building materials to building roads wide enough for residents to evacuate and emergency vehicles to get in at the same time. “Protecting the exterior of your home, especially your roof, is the most important thing a building code can do,” Lisa Dale, a lecturer at Columbia Climate School and co-author of the report, told me. Wood shake roofs are a no-no; asphalt and metal are better choices. Double-glazed windows can withstand radiant heat and are more durable. Defensible Space Keeping the area around your home clear of vegetation and other flammable materials will help prevent sparks from landing in flammable areas.
Oregon, Washington, New Mexico and Colorado are in the process of adopting their own versions. International Wildlife Areas Urban Boundaries Code Barrett told me the idea is to force homeowners to reduce wildfire risk on their property. (States can modify and tweak the codes to suit their unique circumstances.) The authors of the “missing the mark” report argue that state governments should encourage such mandatory building codes in wildfire-prone areas. Dale said that while voluntary codes are better than nothing, mandating these changes helps protect larger communities. If you remove combustible materials from around your home, but your neighbors don’t, your house could burn.
Zoning and land use planning are also underused tools that can make communities more fire-resistant. “I don’t know of any municipality that has been successful in combating wildfires,” Dale says. It’s unclear what this would look like, since there is no precedent. Reducing the number of homes in a given area and spacing them out to reduce emissions between homes is not realistic or feasible, but it may be possible to require residents to maintain “fuel breaks” around residential areas that are free of flammable vegetation.
Focusing on forests and even front yards is easier said than done. Homeowners’ desire to control their own property could thwart state and federal efforts in the early stages. Oregon passed a law in 2021 requiring state officials to regulate home hardening measures that help protect homes against wildfires. But Repulsion Residents’ requests for risk maps showing where some of these requirements would be required were so severe that the state withdrew the maps altogether. Another iteration Just released, the House of Commons has a strong pro-private property ethos that could limit what lawmakers are willing to fund. “They’ll say to me, ‘I don’t want to pay for other people’s landscaping,'” Dale says.
Then there’s industry opposition: When Dale was deputy commissioner of the Colorado Department of Natural Resources, he watched builders and real estate companies defeat recommendations to enforce building codes and zoning. And local governments, which derive much of their revenue from property taxes, may be less willing to restrict new development, even if it’s proposed in dangerous areas.
Still, Barrett said, history offers hope that humanity can adapt and change in the face of wildfires. She reminded me of a story of progress that fire historian Stephen J. Pyne has tracked: America once built cities out of incredibly flammable materials. They kept burning catastrophically. Great Chicago Fire of 1871and the 1906 earthquake and Resulting fire In San Francisco, elected officials and other decision makers began to make changes over the next few decades. Evacuation procedures, smoke detectors, and fire alarms were implemented more widely. Wooden walkways and sawdust insulation soon became relics of the past. We know how to make our homes and communities safer, and fire season gives us both the opportunity and the warning to do so.
