Ringside: Maximizing Home Protection Against Wildfires

Nobody knew how the fire started. It took hold in the dry chaparral and grasslands and quickly spread up the sides of the canyon. Propelled by winds gusting over 40 miles per hour and extremely dry air, the fire spread over the ridge and into the town below. Overwhelmed firefighters could not contain the blaze as it swept through the streets, immolating homes by the hundreds. Even brick homes with slate roofs were not spared. Before it finally was brought under control, 640 structures including 584 homes had been reduced to ashes. Over 4,000 people were left homeless.

Does this sound like the “new normal?” Maybe so, but this description is of the Berkeley fire of 1923. In its time, with barely 4 million people living in California, the Berkeley fire was a catastrophe on par with the fires we see today.

Over the decades California’s forest fires and wildfires have wiped out thousands of homes. In 2018 the horrific Camp Fire in Northern California’s Butte County destroyed 19,000 buildings, most of them homes. The town of Paradise was almost completely incinerated. And in the heart of the San Francisco Bay Area, the devastating Oakland Hills Fire in 1991 consumed nearly 3,000 homes. Prior to the most recent Palisades and Eaton fires in Los Angeles where an estimated 12,000 homes were lost, the region has periodically coped with out-of-control wildfires destroying hundreds of homes.

Fire is a natural part of California’s ecosystems, but the catastrophic wildfires we have seen in recent years are a consequence of mismanagement. Reducing the density of our forests to historically normal levels has universal benefits – healthier trees and wildlife, a revitalized timber industry, and smaller, more easily contained fires. We summarize the steps needed for Californians to save their forests and protect their communities in the policy paper Modern Forest Management.

For the chaparral and oak woodlands that surround most of the Los Angeles Basin, large scale commercial timber harvesting operations aren’t possible. But grazing goats, sheep, and cattle can be a financially self-sustaining way to manage overgrowth. In all of California’s wildlands, prescribed burns and mechanical thinning are also effective ways to reduce the fuel load and prevent truly catastrophic fires. These techniques weren’t applied nearly enough in the mountains and canyons surrounding the neighborhoods in Los Angeles that burned, and need to be adopted going forward.

But no matter how well we manage fuel load in the wildland-urban interface, there will still be fires. What can individual homeowners do to reduce the risk? Drawing from expert sources, here are ten suggestions. Some are obvious and inexpensive. Others are creative and costly. But all of them will help.

1 – Replace your flammable roof. Instead of wood shingles which can easily ignite, install “Class A” roof coverings. This would include composition shingles made out of asphalt and fiberglass, or concrete or clay tiles. Metal roofs are also an option. If there are gaps between the roof covering and the sheathing of the house, they should be plugged with fireproof material and regularly inspected.

2 – Make sure all the vents on your home are designed or retrofit to prevent the entry of embers and flames. These vents or screens that are added later over existing open vents need to be constructed with non-combustible material that can resist high temperatures. They can have openings no more than 1/8 inch to restrict the size of particles that can pass through. Make sure you have protected all vents, not just on the eaves, but anywhere along the roof overhang, or gables, or under balconies, or along your home’s foundation.

3 – Eliminate any potential fuel accumulation on your roof. Regular maintenance and removal of fuel is particularly important on so-called “complex roofs” that have several intersecting roof lines that form an angled surface. These are areas where leaves or pine needles may pile up, offering fuel for flying embers. They should be cleaned regularly, certainly before every fire season. If you have gutters, they should also be cleaned at least once a year, or screened to prevent fuel from accumulating.

4 – Install non-combustible or ignition-resistant siding on the exterior walls of your home. If that is too expensive, prioritize the first two feet from the ground. The most common non-combustible materials are three-coat stucco, metal siding, and fiber cement siding. It is important to recognize that siding may not prevent fire from spreading into the stud cavity of your home under prolonged exposure to flames. But it can offer vital protection when used in conjunction with other fire hardening steps.

5 – Make sure you have fire resistant windows and doors. Using steel framing for your windows and doors. You may even want to install steel doors that withstand intense heat much longer than any other type of door, which may be critical if you need to escape your home during a fire. Fire rated windows can be single pane that have a layer of heat-absorbing material added in order to withstand intense heat. Double paned windows are also far more heat resistant than untreated single pane counterparts. You should also consider getting a steel garage door.

6 – Having fire retardant sprayed onto your home’s exterior will harden it against fire but the material will need to be regularly reapplied. Another way to make effective use of fire retardant is to have a few fire retardant spray kits on hand to use if a fire may be about to threaten your home. There are nontoxic fire retardants that can be applied to structures and surrounding plants and it makes sense to have a few of these kits available.

7 – Remove shrubs and trees that are close to your home. Keeping all plants at least five feet from your home is considered the minimum for safety. In a fire prone area, the further plants are from your home the better. What types of plants makes a big difference. An obvious plant to avoid are palm trees, which can shed burning embers that the wind can carry a great distance. Eucalyptus trees, which have a high oil content and are extremely combustible, are another plant to avoid. In general, if you have plants near your house, make sure they are pruned and well hydrated in order to reduce their potential to ignite.

8 – Install a rooftop sprinkler system. Putting water onto your home and saturating your property can create an environment that is too wet to burn. Many systems come with sensors that trigger automatic activation if a fire is near your home, and many will mix fire retardant with water to increase the effectiveness of the spray. If you have a swimming pool, install a drain that connects to a stub in your yard where you can attach a generator and a pump. You can also set this up just by dropping a hose into your pool that is connected to your pump. This way even if your water main fails and power goes out, you will still be able to activate your sprinklers.

9 – Work with your neighbors. If everyone near you has also taken comprehensive steps to protect their homes against fires, it is far less likely a nearby structure will burn near you, giving off flames and flying embers that threaten your home. If there are local programs to help homeowners pay for upgrades to resist fire, share the information with your neighbors. If all they can afford is to clear brush, help them do the clearing. The more you work together, the better chance your whole neighborhood will have to survive a wildfire.

10 – Pressure elected officials to change the regulations that govern management of adjacent open land, whether it is public or privately held. Unreasonable restrictions on logging, prescribed burns, grazing, and thinning, are a big reason that wildfires have gotten so bad in recent years. Make your voices heard at the local and state level.

Wildfires have always been part of life in California and always will. The worst possible response to wildfire risk is to declare it’s because of climate change and enact laws that confine new home construction to areas within existing cities, while at the same time failing to modify failed land management policies which are the true cause of such severe fires. With proper precautions, it is still possible to own a home in California’s beautiful forests and wildlands.