JustAnEngineer wrote:In a smarter world, those homes destroyed in fire-prone areas would be rebuilt using more fire-resistant materials.
There's talk of it. Cedar shake shingles (a huge problem in the 2007 San Diego fires) are increasingly being banned although there are non-combustible, composite look-alikes available for new construction and retrofits. A lesson-learned from the Wine Country fires is that blown embers can be forced into rooftop attic vents, so we can expect forthcoming code improvements on screening. Wood can be impregnated with fire-retardant chemicals, although given that CARB was a leader in banning wood composites that emit formaldehyde, I can't wait to see what long-term problems arise from use of lesser-known alternates.
From what I've read the two biggest problems were area classifications and defensible spaces. A lot of the Santa Rosa neighborhoods that burned were arguably inside the urban/wilderness transition zone and should have been built to stricter codes on fire resistance and vegetation control. But instead, they were classified as urban/residential and people assumed that a fire entering the neighborhood would be readily confined to one or a few units by urban fire response. Nooooooope.
In the end, I'm not sure what you can do to defend against prolonged drought and 60-70+ mph winds other than evacuate and rebuild. Santa Rosa lost a number of standalone businesses surrounded by parking, some of them well-separated from the forested areas (Applebees, McDonalds, gas station convenience, Kmart). Commercial buildings in those conditions are not normally susceptible to wildfire, but if you blast the area with a prolonged spray of firebrands, anything can happen.
