Yesterday’s post on wildfire suggested that it will take awhile for the “new new wisdom” to be accepted. Last night’s CBS News proved my point.
A report (annoying ad comes before the news report) from CBS reporter Sandra Hughes showed hundreds of homes built to “shelter-in-place” standards and found that “not one home had even been touched by the flames.” So what does Hughes learn from this? That people should not be allowed to build to shelter-in-place standards because it will encourage them to build in fire-prone areas.
“Critics of shelter in place say it is just another way for builders to push developments into remote high-fire areas.” Okay, so critics say that. But then, Hughes suddenly becomes one of those critics.
“While building in these remote areas may seem like a beautiful escape,” she lectures, “you can’t hide from the forces of mother nature.” Wait a minute — didn’t she just say that houses built to shelter-in-place standards effectively can hide from the forces of mother nature?
She quotes a firefighter saying, “There isn’t any reason that we should be developing projects that are going to allow two or three hundred homes to burn down.” Yes, and that is why you use shelter-in-place standards.
So what does she recommend instead? Developers should be required to build in “less fire-prone areas” (are there any in San Bernardino or Riverside counties?) and rules should “require homes to be built closer together to make it easier to protect them and allow the county to buy up land to create buffer zones.”
Closer together? That sounds like (horrors!) New Urbanism. More to the point, if houses are close together and one catches on fire, the radiant heat from that fire will ignite its neighbor and pretty soon they are all burning down. If any standards are used at all, they should keep homes at least 100 to 140 feet apart, not closer together.
And what will go in those buffer zones? To make them fire proof, the county will pretty much have to cut down the trees and pave over the land. Think people will be happy to have their “parks” treated that way? No. Most likely, the county will allow the buffer zones to grow into dense, fire-prone forests.
In other words, keep doing what doesn’t work and ignore the evidence of what does work that is right before your video cameras. It sounds to me like someone is using the fire to push their density agenda and gain more control over how other people live and use their land.
Of course, someone will no doubt say that I am using the fires to push my agenda. What’s my agenda? People should be allowed to live the way they want to live. We can encourage them to make their homes safe, and educate them about how to do that. Letting people build safe homes on their own land will help keep housing affordable.
OMG! Safe homes, affordable housing, and protection of property rights! What a nefarious agenda!
As far as Sandra Hughes is concerned, affordable housing and property rights are irrelevant. Moreover, so are finding the best ways to protect homes from fire and learning from the experience of the 2007 fires.
Sounds great and all, but tacking on thousands of dollars worth of equipment and labor hardly makes a home more affordable. And on the ground, the densities that coastal scrub McSuburb promoters like are the ones that are most prone to burning. That is: denser developments aren’t as prone to burning, or low density is less prone to burning as long it is close to a road.
Full disclosure: I lived in CA and if folks want a McSuburb in fire-prone areas, good on them, as long as my insurance rates don’t go up when their house burns. Oh, wait: my insurance rates go up when their house burns.
DS
LAT today:
Yes, perhaps it will.
DS
DS,
What “thousands of dollars of equipment and labor”? A shelter-in-place house basically has a non-flammable roof (usually cheaper than a wood one), non-flammable materials around the edge of the house (like a concrete walkway), and minimally flammable landscaping (like grass). What is so expensive about that? Especially when the alternative is to further reduce the amount of land available for housing, which would really make housing expensive.
Like CBS News, you are basically in denial. Here we have a construction technique that makes it possible for people to live in and near wildlands, and you don’t want them too, so you deny that it is worthwhile.
Here we have a construction technique that makes it possible for people to live in and near wildlands, and you don’t want them too, so you deny that it is worthwhile.
No I don’t. You’re putting words in my keyboard.
Nonetheless, one success does not a trend make. We’ll see how quickly codes change & whether this ends up being a luxury item. Also, the link you included the other day approvingly contained additional systems that you admitted would cost more.
Lastly, since you mentioned supply and affordablity again, where are your numbers that show building x more houses will drive down housing prices by y? You always seem to evade this point, instead conferring upon us the soothing “more affordable” but not the rational “more affordable by y”?
Cough up those figures. I’d like to see them please.
DS
Planner Dan Lastly, since you mentioned supply and affordablity again, where are your numbers that show building x more houses will drive down housing prices by y? You always seem to evade this point, instead conferring upon us the soothing “more affordable†but not the rational “more affordable by y�
Cough up those figures. I’d like to see them please.
JK: Jeesh, now you want us to prove the law of supply and demand to you. Just read any highschool economics book.
Why don’t you cough up some real numbers to prove some of the planner’s typical manta such as:
* High Density will reduce traffic congestion. It doesn’t, it increases congestion.
* High Density will reduce cost. It actually increases costs.
* High Density will give us affordable housing. High density increases housing costs.
* Mass transit saves money. It is much more expansive than driving.
* Light rail causes development. No the tax abatements and special treatments cause development.
* A single light rail line can carry as many people as a ten lane freeway. Actually it carries as many people as about 1/4-1/3 lane or freeway.
Thanks
JK
One has to wonder what Mr.Karlock’s political agenda really is?
Pingback: Fire Rights and Wrongs » The Antiplanner