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Analysis: Safety Rules Give Homes Better Chance In Wildfires

 April 17, 2019 at 10:44 AM PDT

Speaker 1: 00:00 You're listening to KPBS mid day edition. I'm jade Hindman and I'm Maureen Cavenaugh watching fire. Whether it's the tragedy at Notre dom or a brush fire along the side of the freeway. It's always a visceral experience for Californians. That's because we know we live with the threat of fire, a threat that's becoming worse. Last week, governor Newsome released a report that outlined possible strategies for helping California's utilities cope with the costs of wildfire and during that announcement he referenced some findings in a new in depth mcclachi investigative report on recent California wildfires. Speaker 2: 00:37 They did a wonderful piece yesterday around the campfire assessing, uh, this issue of home hardening. 51% of the homes that were built after 2008 related to the campfire, 51% of them survived the fire. Just 18% of the homes that were built before 2008 survived the wildfire. Speaker 1: 01:01 Joining me now by Skype is Phillip Reese, a reported with the Sacramento Bee who cowrote the investigation titled Destined to burn. It was produced in partnership with the Associated Press, Media News, and Ganette and Phillip, welcome to the program. Thanks for having me. The mcclachi analysis found 2.7 million Californians live in areas deemed to be at very high hazard for wildfires. We saw the town of paradise destroyed by the Campfire. How many other towns like paradise are there in California, Speaker 3: 01:34 we identified 75 additional towns across the state with more than 1000 people. These include incorporated places and unincorporated communities where a more than 90% of the town was in a very high hazard fire severity zone and they're everywhere from near the southern border all the way up into the northern mountains. Speaker 1: 01:52 What are the very high fired hazard areas in San Diego? Speaker 3: 01:56 All right, so there's quite a few actually. Um, the one we visited was Harbison Canyon and it burned in the cedar fire, which I think was around 2003. And then it also burned earlier in the Laguna fire, which was in 1970. We also looked a little bit at um, uh, the town of humble, the town of Descanso. And then just San Diego itself, even though much of the town is not in a very high fire hazard severity zone, much of it is about 25% of the population of San Diego lives in one of these areas that cal fire is designated to be at very high risk if a fire was to start. So San Diego itself, even though it's not on our list of 75 because it's so large, I'm actually has more than 300,000 people living in these, uh, these zones. Speaker 1: 02:40 Tell us more about harvest and Canyon in the East county here in San Diego. Your report finds that there've been more houses built in that area since it lasts, burned, but not much in the way of road improvement or fire safety. Is that right? Speaker 3: 02:55 That's right. So this area, what we found is some of the residents we talked to and some of the fire officials there said that the infrastructure had not improved quickly enough to match the growth in the community. So we heard from a couple of different people that the roads were too narrow, for instance. And only recently did the community get 24 hour fire protection, so there's still some challenges there. So aside from looking at the areas around the state that could be the next paradise. You also examined why it is that in certain neighborhoods some homes survive fires while others don't and your analysis found it had to do with new building codes. Just to be a little more particular about it, we found that homes built since 2008 in the path of the campfire, which is the fire that burned through paradise and neighboring communities. Speaker 3: 03:40 If 51% of those homes since 2008 is the governor was referring to survive the campfire, which was a much higher percentage than those built before then. The reason that 2008 date is important is because that's when the state using these cal fire maps that we use in our analysis instituted stricter building codes and these building codes require a whole lot of things, a litany of things, but among them are thanks to make structures safer. Things like I'm roofing and events that are resistant to embers, which was the cause of a lot of these urban fire sprain. As the wind blows, the embers into the vents are under the roof, the fire catches. Um, so anyway, the, the, the homes that were built after that survived at a higher rate than the homes built before that day. That was the extent of our analysis. So what if someone gets that information, a homeowner has that information, wants to retrofit, is home with a new roof or fire an ember proof fence? Speaker 3: 04:30 Is there any kind of state program that would help them pay for it? You know, I think there's a lot of things under discussion, but um, I think that it is something that the state is talking about right now and it's something that I'm governor nuisance talking about. He referenced it in the clip you suggested. The other conversation of course, is surrounding whether to how much to reduce fuels and how much did thin forests, the balance between doing that and protecting the environment. That's another big ongoing conversation among many to protect these homes. What was the overall purpose of the article destined to burn? Why did your paper and the others take on this issue? Well, we've just seen this large increase in wildfires over the last few years. We covered the campfire. We were the largest media organization nearby, I suppose you'd say. And we wanted to see where else this could happen. Speaker 3: 05:19 And we were just surprised that there were so many places that like paradise, like Malibu in southern California that also had trouble this past year. So much of the town was in these very, very high fire hazard areas. Um, so that was the first thing. And then we also wanted to see what can be done with about it. So we tested our hypothesis that new homes would survive more readily than older homes. And that appeared to be the case in paradise even though there was not a ton of newer homes. It was in the hundreds, um, compared to thousands of older homes. But it still showed this pattern that we, um, that we wrote about. So we wanted to point out the problem and we also wanted give readers a chance to see us possible solution. I've been speaking with a brace, a reporter with the Sacramento Bee who cowrote the investigation titled Destined to burn. And Phillip, thank you. Sure. Thank you.

All told, about 51 percent of the 350 single-family homes built after 2008 in the path of the Camp Fire were undamaged, according to McClatchy's analysis of Cal Fire data and Butte County property records.