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Why do some homes survive wildfires?
Like many Californians, I became familiar with the term “home hardening” last year, when insurance companies had finally come to grips with the cost of the 2018 Woolsey fire and were fleeing California or increasing insurance rates to such unaffordable levels that many homeowners chose to forgo insurance entirely.
My homeowner’s policy, which included fire insurance, was canceled last year and my insurance agent had a tough time finding a replacement policy. She finally found me a lifeline, but I had to prove that my home was hardened against fire. This meant that my 50-year roof, which had another 15 or so years left on it, had to be replaced, trees and bushes on the side and front of my house had to be removed and the enormous trees in my backyard had to be extensively cut. One of the most expensive aspects of my home hardening was removing five of the tall Italian Cypress trees that had provided a privacy line between my neighbor’s property and mine. This created a vegetation-free perimeter around my house, but I chose to cut the rest of Cypress in half. (Italian Cypresses have been nicknamed Roman Candles by firefighters since the oily, thick foliage seems to explode in fire and the bone-dry needles and other dead material hidden beneath the exterior green, are also highly combustible.)
Home hardening comes down to defending your structure from wildfire and creating a non-combustible, five-foot perimeter around your home, The home and surrounding area should be able to withstand embers that fly through the sky during firestorms like dandelion fluffs, and spark devastating house fires. The recent Kenneth and Palisades fires were a stark reminder that homeowners must do more to safeguard their properties.
On January 17, NPR posted a story that demonstrates how some homes survived the recent blazes while others, right in the same neighborhood, were destroyed.
A recent LA County report states the Palisades Fire burned more than 23,448 acres, destroyed 6,809 structures, and damaged another 972 structures, but amazingly, some homes withstood the onslaught of flames belting through their neighborhoods, “seemingly untouched,” NPR writer Lauren Sommer wrote. Were these homeowners lucky, or had they prepared for the possibility of unfathomable destruction caused by wildfire?
Safeguarding your home and the surrounding area includes removing and thinning out easily ignitable vegetation, especially in fire-prone areas. Today’s building and fire codes, require you to create a “defensible space” around your home, be diligent, and do routine maintenance.
First on the list to help stave off fire destruction is clearing any vegetation that touches or is within five feet of your home. Remember, it just takes a few embers to set these plants afire, and with the close proximity of ignitable plants to your home, loss of property seems inevitable.
Adding space between structures is also advised to keep your home safe. What this means is that if you have a shed, for instance, or an ADU (additional dwelling unit), make sure that there is at least 20 to 30 feet between the structures. The NPR article stated, “Even hardened materials have a hard time withstanding that much exposure” if the space between the home and structure is less than 10 feet.
Use fire-resistant building materials, like stucco, rather than wood. Class A fire-resistant roofs are made of metal, concrete or clay tiles, slate, or fiberglass asphalt composition shingles. Wood roofing materials were outlawed in California in 2001.
Fire-resistant gutters around the roof line should be metal, and gutter guards should also be metal. The wire mesh in the vents around your home should be no greater than 1/8 inch. The mesh must be small enough to help safeguard from ember intrusion of your house during a firestorm. How do you tell if your vent’s mesh is to large? According to the NPR article, a common golf tee should not be able to penetrate the mesh.
Friends and family questioned whether I made a sound financial decision to spend so much money on home hardening rather than just biting the bullet and spending more on insurance by switching to the California Fair plan. After obtaining a similarly priced insurance policy from the one I had in previous years that was all-inclusive, I ultimately decided it was the right decision, and not just because of the possibility of coverage during a devastating loss due to a wild inferno. I calculated that the money saved on insurance costs actually made my new roof a better investment over time, and truthfully, I don’t miss the Italian Cypresses at all. In fact, I may replace the shortened trees with fire-resistant trees like American Mountain Ash, Beech, or a Chinese Pistache tree, all considered better options to withstand ignition.
More home hardening and defensible space information can be found at:
- https://wildfireprepared.org
- https://readyforwildfire.org
- https://www.fire.ca.gov/home-hardening
- https://www.fire.ca.gov/dspace
- https://defensiblespace.org
To get your home assessed for free go to: