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August West
Trad climber
Where the wind blows strange
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Nov 21, 2018 - 08:01pm PT
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The ecology of California is largely fire-adapted.
The ecology CA used to have was adapted to the fires CA used to have. Even beyond the fuel load that has built up over decades of fire supression, the climate is hotter and drier and invasive beetles and disease have done a real number on the forests.
So I think there are a lot of trees that are no longer adapted to the conditions they face.
I think the transition to a new ecology is going to be very painful.
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TLP
climber
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Nov 21, 2018 - 08:10pm PT
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DMT, I think you may be misinterpreting many of the photos in your link. You need to look at BOTH the before and after, and in many of the after photos, the trees still have leaves and fine twigs...except of course the ones right overhanging the house that burned, and which were scorched by the house fire. Many of the burned houses were probably ignited either by embers (the nearby trees being irrelevant) or by nearby burning structures or propane tank explosions. The photos show clearly that the vast majority of the pine trees did not experience crown fire - and they generally do not, unless there are sufficient ground and ladder fuels. Many of the Paradise homes in those pictures, the owners had indeed raked their forest, but their houses burned anyway.
Coffey Park had no forest around it at all, yet the entire subdivision burned up, thousands of homes. How does that fit in your interpretation?
Certainly houses with poor defensible space are really at risk; this was the case for the Angora Fire in South Lake Tahoe, in a neighborhood I was very familiar with. There were a lot of houses with really dense, small size lodgepole pines right up against the houses. But you should read the USFS post-fire analysis, easily available online. It's not the simple picture of communities built in the forest as is often repeated.
I think much more attention needs to be paid to building materials and methods, along with management of lower-stratum fuels in intact forest, NOT just using it as an excuse to log and reset to small size woody plants which burn like crazy (exhibit A: Camp Fire itself).
August, you are absolutely right - a lot of the presently conifer-forested area of the Sierra is in the process of converting to shrubland and oak. Completely different, and a land cover type which will generally burn 100%, along with every house in it that is built from wood.
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rick sumner
Trad climber
reno, nevada/ wasilla alaska
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Nov 22, 2018 - 09:33am PT
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The more stringent codes are already here (wildland urban interface) and practiced in scattered jurisdictions. I've built 3 houses in moderate to high fire danger areas in the last couple years. The main components are class A roofing, exterior firewalls, and eave venting that automatically close off with high heat. Basically eliminating any method of burning embers to contact flammables.Added costs are probably less than $4.00 psf.
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Reilly
Mountain climber
The Other Monrovia- CA
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Nov 22, 2018 - 09:42am PT
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$4/SF? That’s hard to believe. On the other hand if it were $25/SF it would still be a bargain.
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rick sumner
Trad climber
reno, nevada/ wasilla alaska
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Nov 22, 2018 - 10:47am PT
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Here's the breakdown on a 2000sf ranch with a 3 car garage. Flame block sheathing add $1200. Exterior 5/8 type x gypboard add $3600. 250' Vulcan venting add $2500. Misc flashings add $300. Concrete lap siding versus regularly used lap siding is a wash. And I always use a class A rated roof anyway. Total contractors cost without markup $7600 Reilly.
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Reilly
Mountain climber
The Other Monrovia- CA
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Nov 22, 2018 - 10:59am PT
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OK, what about windows? Don’t most windows explode? And even if you have a Class A
roof what about eaves? And assuming your eaves are encased in 3/4” of stucco how
ember-proof are ‘ember-proof’ eave vents? And if you forego eave vents then you’ve fired a
warning shot across Title 24 regs, no?
Not starting a pissing match, this stuff is beyond my ken so I’m just wondering. Personally,
if I was gonna build my dream house in wildfire country I would strongly consider an earthen
home. I’ll probably just wind up buying outside Forks, Washington (100”/yr) or Sitka, AK(120”/yr). 😉
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rick sumner
Trad climber
reno, nevada/ wasilla alaska
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Nov 22, 2018 - 11:20am PT
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The eaves are soffitted with conrete board over 5/8 type x with a Vulcan strip vent running down the center. Exterior doors are all metal, but I agree the windows could be a weak point if the homeowner doesn't maintain at least a 30' defensible perimeter without coniferous trees or dry shrubs over 3' tall.
DMT- Bring back asbestos building products ( with government indemnity against lawsuits in high fire danger locales) and retrofits of existing structures could be done affordably with a high degree of survivability when combined with common sense forest management practices and active homeowner maintenance of defensible space.
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G_Gnome
Trad climber
Cali
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Nov 22, 2018 - 01:30pm PT
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Rick, would you want to work with asbestos products? How safe are they now days?
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TLP
climber
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Nov 22, 2018 - 02:45pm PT
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Rick S., you are exactly spot on in nearly every point: there are a LOT of reasonably affordable building materials and methods that greatly enhance the fire resistance of a house, it is so good to have the details from someone who is hands-on with them. But as you say, you also have to manage your immediate defensible space and surrounding lands correctly as well. It's essential to keep fires as ground fires, not involving the whole canopy height which generates so much heat there's no fire resistance that's good enough except all-concrete and nothing flammable in the interior either (unrealistic). In chaparral, it's nearly impossible to achieve effective defensible space, 100 ft is not enough in fires driven by high winds.
I'd hesitate a bit about the asbestos but not reject it out of hand. There are different minerals all lumped together under that word, maybe certain of them would be OK but IMHO it would be a bit hasty to just reverse the prohibition without more info and maybe some qualification about what's allowed and what's not. Cementitious siding instead of wood seems like a great idea, questionable cost (not sure if that's one of your options mentioned).
Jim B comments on the limited hours of fire resistance that different things are rated for. True that, but if the surrounding area has no fuel that burns for longer than, say, 1 hour, that's all the fire resistance you need (depending on how your neighbor's house is built and how close it is). Not only are interior sprinklers really destructive too, but largely pointless because by the time they activate, your house is probably largely burning on the outside already (to make the interior hot enough to trigger the sprinklers), or will burn anyway because all the sprinklers are wetting is the interior. In some areas, they put under-eave sprinklers, not interior, and that makes a lot of sense.
California has always had these big, high-wind-driven fires. The data suggests we're having more of them nowadays but it doesn't matter: we need to brainstorm all of the aspects of having communities in highly flammable ecological zones (most of the state), and start putting them all into effect, starting with the quickest, least debatable, and most affordable (in some combination). Aspendougy's idea that all parcels need to be about 50 acres and have no plant matter on them wouldn't be among those. (Think about the erosion!)
Fritz, I was always skeptical Jeffrey and ponderosa pines were different species, but queried the Man (Critchfield) for pine systematics, and he assured me they're definitely different and explained the characters that really set them apart. So I'm convinced. But neither the bark appearance nor the supposed vanilla smell are reliable at all. The prickles, so-so, cone size useless, etc. Seeds are a good character, and there are some good characters relating to vegetative branch tips. Tricky, but they're definitely separate species. Jeffrey can be huge, up to about 7 ft diameter that I have seen, lifespan can exceed 600 years (surviving multiple giant fires, no doubt).
Happy Thanksgiving everyone, hopefully anyone who can spare time or cash or both has done what they could to help our fire refugees. Could easily be a lot of us who post here (probably was!).
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Ricky D
Trad climber
Sierra Westside
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Nov 22, 2018 - 06:40pm PT
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^^^^That better NOT be romaine lettuce.
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Minerals
Social climber
The Deli
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Nov 22, 2018 - 08:39pm PT
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Re. asbestos
There are different minerals all lumped together under that word...
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Asbestos
Six mineral types are defined by the United States Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) as "asbestos" including those belonging to the serpentine class and those belonging to the amphibole class. All six asbestos mineral types are known to be human carcinogens.[11][12] The visible fibers are themselves each composed of millions of microscopic "fibrils" that can be released by abrasion and other processes.[2]
I used to find chrysotile in outcrops of sheared serpentine where I grew up.
Chrysotile
Chrysotile, CAS No. 12001-29-5, is obtained from serpentinite rocks which are common throughout the world. Its idealized chemical formula is Mg3(Si2O5)(OH)4.[13] Chrysotile appears under the microscope as a white fiber.
Chrysotile has been used more than any other type and accounts for about 95% of the asbestos found in buildings in America.[14] Chrysotile is more flexible than amphibole types of asbestos, and can be spun and woven into fabric. The most common use was corrugated asbestos cement roofing primarily for outbuildings, warehouses and garages. It may also be found in sheets or panels used for ceilings and sometimes for walls and floors. Chrysotile has been a component in joint compound and some plasters. Numerous other items have been made containing chrysotile including brake linings, fire barriers in fuseboxes, pipe insulation, floor tiles, residential shingles, and gaskets for high temperature equipment.
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TLP
climber
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Nov 23, 2018 - 01:34pm PT
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Thanks for the link, Minerals, it's an excellent Wikipedia article. It doesn't seem that any of the six are suitable for incorporation into building materials that are going to be sawed or drilled, which pretty much rules them out for just about any residential purpose. There are surely alternatives that provide reasonably fire-resistant siding at the same or not much higher cost, without the risks. Not my area, just seems like it ought to be possible (hardieboard - don't know about affordability).
DMT hits the key point: fire-adapted species. What we who live in the mountains, foothills, and coast ranges of California need to become is fire-adapted communities. There's no way, especially under current and anticipated future climate, that we'll be able to avoid these big fires driven by high winds.
To be sure, the utilities should be doing much more to decrease the risk posed by their lines. The idea that they might brown us out to avoid starting fires is better than nothing, but still a very weak bandaid and proof that their lines and the vegetation around them need to be maintained way better. That part of their expenses ought to be recoverable from customers, it's just what the cost is. Underground would be great but is completely financially infeasible. Liabilities, sorry stockholders, every investment carries risk, and you lost on that one.
But we will still have these fires. In August/September 1987, there was a period of intense dry thunderstorms for about 2 weeks, and as a result the statewide burned area (Cal Fire, USFS, BLM, etc.) was 873,000 acres. (Go to this page http://www.fire.ca.gov/fire_protection/fire_protection_fire_info_redbooks for access to fire summaries for 1943 to 2016.)
In 2008, lightning started a bunch of fires too, one of which (Humboldt Fire) burned 80 or so houses in Paradise; only by the luck of wind and weather shift did the whole town not burn up at that time. There was a Butte County Grand Jury study and report (https://www.buttecounty.net/Portals/1/GrandJury/08-09/Grand_Jury_Report_FY08-09-Sec10.pdf) about the fire and evacuation vulnerabilities of that part of the County.
There are also a variety of newspaper and other reports, including eyewitness statements of people who stayed (or didn't have a chance to evacuate before the fire was upon them), reinforcing that one of the main risks is embers landing on roofs and decks, and houses were saved when these were put out, or burned if they weren't:
"Cory Adams had his home inspected by a Cal Fire officer in April. The only thing he was told was to clean the gutters on two adjacent units.
Most of his property is gravel, dirt and grass that's either been mowed by him or munched by his two llamas. ..."Your house is gone," the neighbor said. "There's nothing left."...Adams said firefighters told him that the house caught fire from floating embers that landed on the roof."
"Lawrentz, 80, had an acre-size ring of mowed grass around his property. All brush was moved away. It had been too windy to prepare as he normally does for fire season: tilling the protection zone around his house into dirt. He'd recently put on a new roof. ... It was still standing - but it was surrounded by scorched earth, charred trees and a dusting of ash. ... As they inspected the house, they found the wide-tread tracks of fire equipment encircling the house, a hint of what had happened in their absence. They also found five places where the deck had caught on fire - and firefighters had put it out."
And so on. These quotes are from https://www.sfgate.com/bayarea/article/74-Paradise-homes-destroyed-by-Humboldt-Fire-3209635.php
The article begins with a photo of people visiting the ruins of their house, with dense unburned woody vegetation right behind. Doesn't look even remotely like defensible space, but it didn't burn - only the house did.
There's an excellent post-fire analysis of the Angora fire by the USFS, available here: http://bofdata.fire.ca.gov/board_committees/monitoring_study_group/msg_archived_documents/msg_archived_documents_/murphy_usfs_2007_a.pdf
"Fire spread into this residential area with relatively low flame lengths. Almost all of the trees immediately to the west of the residences (in the fuel treatment unit) have unburned crowns indicating low to moderate intensity surface fire behavior. Photographic and video evidence support this conclusion.
"After spreading into the residential area the fire ignited combustible material adjacent to houses which then ignited the houses. Interviews with homeowners indicated that many of the houses had attached decks with combustible material stored under the deck. In some cases direct flame impingement from a low intensity surface fire ignited these combustibles, which then ignited the deck and ultimately the house.
"Visual examinations on the ground and aerial photos reveal that much of the vegetation between houses did not burn or burned with surface fire. Interviews with firefighters, other eyewitnesses, and video examination indicate that many houses ignited from burning embers produced by house fires upwind. A cycle of spotting from house to house in this area ended only when the fire ran into a buffer of trees with reduced house density to the northeast of Mt Shasta Circle."
In short, the report shows that reducing ground and ladder fuels so that a fire in forest composed of large enough thick-barked conifer trees (the type of forest being a critically important factor) burns as a relatively "mild" ground fire is a huge factor in increasing community safety. But equally important are several others:
1) managing the immediate defensible space around every house to maintain that low flame length (some houses that burned in the Angora Fire had dense, small, bushy lodgepole pines right up against the house - I saw them myself a couple years prior to the fire).
2) either not storing combustible materials in the yard, or protecting them from embers (difficult but possible)
3) maximizing the fire resistance of the houses themselves (at a minimum, with intumescent exterior paint; they probably all had class A roofs but that's still vulnerable if large embers land; vents that close or exclude embers; and so on)
4) no wood deck unless you plan to stay and put out embers that land on it;
5) and the authorities hate to admit it, but the best thing is for people in defensible situations to stay and control spot fires. There are just going to be too many of these for them to get them all, and once you have one house going, a lot of nearby and downwind ones are at extreme risk too.
There's a lot of discussion available from various sources about the nature of the evacuation orders for Paradise. Same thing comes up every one of these fires. They want everyone out (wrong idea, but they do), but the roads just can't handle that many vehicles all at once. People will die along the way, or just be stuck in the neighborhood unable even to get on the road out. So they think, let's phase it by zones (you can see this on the Camp Fire incident page on Cal Fire, for just one example). This doesn't work, communications are difficult, the fires move way too quickly, and so on; It's still a disaster.
The bottom line is, it's just not possible to evacuate these communities from the kinds of fires we now have and will have more of. We just need to make the communities much, much more fire-adapted. The Angora Fire analysis and many other sources provide a lot of guidance. We just need to do it.
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August West
Trad climber
Where the wind blows strange
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Nov 24, 2018 - 10:44am PT
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^^^
Sounds thought out and reasonable.
I'm guessing the majority of people living in the foothills don't think that through.
So CA is going to continue to have lives lost and a lot of property destroyed from fires.
The state could try more heavy hand regulation but I'm not sure how effective that would be.
If Paradise type fires become routine enough, maybe fear will drive some positive changes.
Maybe.
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i'm gumby dammit
Sport climber
da ow
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Nov 24, 2018 - 11:01am PT
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So for staying at home, is there a risk of losing water pressure (on municipal water) during a fire?
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John M
climber
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Nov 24, 2018 - 11:20am PT
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Yes.. the water went out in Paradise according to people who stayed. Some had alternate sources of water such as a pool. Another I believe had a well and a generator to power it. Some just seemed to get lucky. According to multiple stories, the wind died in some areas for about an hour. In one story I listened to the man seemed to get lucky because the wind was blowing from across the street from him and there was not home opposite him. His neighbors on both sides lost homes, but there were homes across the street from them. I don't know if he would have been able to save his home with just a hose if the wind had come from the direction of one of this neighbors. Once a house goes up it becomes a kind of blow torch in high winds. In last years fires in Southern California there are stories of people in neighborhoods trying to save their homes with a garden hose but couldn't once the neighbors house went up.
there is a lots to consider in these kinds of fires. I wonder if each neighborhood had a group of volunteer firefighters assigned to it and they had hoses and each neighborhood had its own water tank with generator and pumps. . It would take a lot of coordination and training. Plus some money to implement, but then the local fire department could send one trained man into each neighborhood to guide the volunteers.
Just a thought.
Thanks to those with knowledge who are posting up. I have been learning a lot.
My heart still breaks for those who lost their homes.
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TLP
climber
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Nov 24, 2018 - 12:46pm PT
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I just agonize for those who lost homes and/or friends and family. It's awful and cause for much lost sleep, living as I do in a setting that could easily have the same tragedies next year.
The most important thing is to recognize what happens in these events, namely, that burning houses and firewood piles are a much much bigger problem than vegetation. It's relatively easy to do the vegetation management, and most people have in fact done that. Making our houses and yards less fire-susceptible, not so much.
It's not a good idea to focus too much on the stay-and-protect vs. evacuate and hope the local fire department saves your individual house. That's not the point, the point is to make every house and yard much less vulnerable to anything more than just tiny spot fires, so that it's conceivable to stay and put those out, but equally to make it easier for the F.D. to save your house and those of all your neighbors. If you've got a wood pile and wood deck all going, they're going to bail and go next door and put out some spot fires, then maybe come back but probably not because by then yours is a total loss so why waste their time. They're totally up front about it, they go to the houses they can save and let the basket cases go up. Makes sense to me.
There are additional categories of people who stay: those who are incapable of evacuating in a rush, those whose vehicles aren't working (or break down inconveniently), and those who got stuck in traffic or couldn't even get on the road out, every street already a parking lot. It may not be a choice.
I agree with the Honnold analogy only in part. True, if you have no last ditch escape or shelter plan, if you fail you die, horribly. No way would I hope for Lucky in that case either. But the analogy breaks down in one main way: in this case, with some prep, you can change the difficulty of the climb, bring it down from 5.13a to maybe 5.4. That's in the range I'd go for any day.
The fire fighting strategy bears some discussion too - local groups with some minimal equipment, more vehicles and humanpower for the F.D., whatever. But the most important thing is to reduce the fire susceptibility in the first place. That does mean some requirements and infringement on what you can do, but so be it.
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the albatross
Gym climber
Flagstaff
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Nov 24, 2018 - 03:32pm PT
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Some interesting and informed discussions on this thread.
I believe the last megafire I worked in CA was the Rim fire some years back. At the time it may have been one of the larger fires in the state, but it seems like that record has been surpassed several times.
My heartfelt condolences to those who lost their homes on the Camp fire. I can’t imagine the stress and strain on the first responders. Unfortunately this is the new abnormal and we can likely expect many more devestating fires in the coming years, particularly in CA given the population density and fuel types. I’m not sure we have any way to avoid these types of fires given the warming planet but do have some observations to add.
My colleagues who regularly fight fire in CA tell me a typical response for a “smoke report” is an air attack (aerial supervisor), two air tankers, a heavy helicopter, 1-2 medium helicopters, 2 hand crews (40 persons), and 10 engines, plus miscellaneous overhead. That’s a lot of “firepower” compared to much of the rest of the country. They are able to catch likely over 95% of those fires, it’s those handful that get way that make the news...
If I lived in a Wildland Urban interface area (WUI) in CA, I’d consider flame resistant housing (stucco, brick), and maintain the largest defensible space I could (removing as much flammable vegetation as possible). I’d consider an auxiliary water facility (i.e. cistern), generator and sprinklers to cover the roof and housing. Still, the possibility and intensity of a burning structure 20’ from mine would be unsettling.
Hooblie posted a pic of forest thinning outside Flagstaff, AZ on the previous page of this thread. This is part of a forest restoration act (4FRI) which has been ongoing for quite some time in NAZ. Although there has been some questionable cutting, this has been a very successful program implemented by city, state and fed governments to reduce the risk of catastrophic wildfires in this part of the state. Also, the forest surrounding Flagstaff is fairly aggressive in letting lightning caused fires run their course. These strategies have been mostly successful in protecting out cities over the last 15-20 years.
As a firefighter with more than two decades experience on wildland fires across this country, I’d suggest if we want to reduce the risk of catastrophic wildfires, we need to implement more mechanical treatments as in thinning of smaller trees, get used to breathing more smoke from managed fires and start building with more flame resistant materials.
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Clyde
Mountain climber
Boulder
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Nov 24, 2018 - 04:41pm PT
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Pretty much every issue in this recent part of the thread, I covered in my book, The Fire Smart Home Handbook. You can lead a horse to water but you can't make it drink.
Mitigation info is out there ad nauseam, mostly written by people who have never done it and don't live it. The free info sucks so bad, as a homeowner dealing with the land truth, I found it was pretty much unusable. Even Boulder's much touted Wildfire Partners program is mostly a sham.
The few people who read my book will know at least something about building materials, fending off the fire, even fire bunkers and surviving during an evac. When I wrote it, I was thinking of the standard WUI where staying is often better than evacuating (politically incorrect).
Here's the irony, and my major mistake, I ignored the biggest threat: city dwellers blissfully unaware. I'm truly safer here than the people on the west edge of Boulder even though I'm surrounded by forest. The massive Texas fires in 2011 and Waldo Canyon in 2012 should have clued me in. But I was too focused on us WUI dwellers.
At least those of us in the WUI have options. The clueless city dwellers are the subjects of their government. It isn't the trees or shrubland but the house next door that is the biggest threat. Their evac routes are down-sized for bike lanes, the old water infrastructure can't handle crisis demand, the head people are elected rather than selected. Now with a larger home-free population living on the fringes of cities, disaster is inevitable. And little of this has anything to do with climate change or beetle kill but that's what will get the blame from gullible media.
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the albatross
Gym climber
Flagstaff
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Nov 24, 2018 - 05:09pm PT
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Good points Clyde. I too believe that disaster is inevitable. Though I beg to differ on one point, climate change (a warming planet) has made a big difference in the intensity of wildfires in the last couple decades.
Interesting you brought up Texas 2011 (spent 55 days there on assignment) and watched in slack jawed horror as 350+ homes burned on the Waldo fire (Colorado Springs 2012 or so).
The city folks have it tough. Those of us that live in the Wildlands or WUI have much better chances by taking management into our own hands... If we as a country want to reduce the risk of catastrophic wildfire, we should be more proactive in mechanical thinning of smaller diameter vegetation and introducing more fire into fire prone landscapes. It’s a tough sell though and at times a dangerous gamble, with reduced budgets for forest management and reluctance of people to inhale smoke from controlled burns.
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