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What saved the ‘miracle house’ in Lahaina?
- civilitty 3y ago> But Michael Wara, the director of the Climate and Energy Policy Program at the Stanford Wood Institute for the Environment, said it was likely the Millikins’ decision to dig out the existing landscaping directly surrounding the house and replace it with river stones that made the biggest difference. > “What folks in the wildfire business call the zone zero or the ember ignition zone, is kind of a key factor in whether homes do or do not burn down,” Wara said. > Having nothing combustible in the 5 feet directly around a house is enormously important. This has become increasingly important for fire insurance here in Southern California over the last decade. My neighbor has five acres and when he bought it after a fire destroyed his previous house, he went around and killed everything on his property except for a few distant trees using Round Up (creating a neighborhood standoff over the runoff in the process). We also had to completely clear cut all plant life that borders the small roads leading up to the neighborhood and all the properties because firefighters will refuse to send their trucks into any area that might be quickly cut off by flying embers lighting shrubs on fire.
- everybodyknows 3y agoFTA: > ... if there’s something next to the house that is combustible — a wood fence, a bush, dry grass — that’s often what will ignite the structure ... In SoCal, succulents are popular -- thick leaves full of a low oil content sap. What is the advice on succulents as a fire hazard?
- zoky 3y agoThey’re basically not a fire hazard at all unless they get really dried out. In fact, large patches of succulents such as ice plant are often used as a firebreak.
- tamimio 3y ago[flagged]
- interstice 3y agoNZ houses are typically all wood and/or stamped steel. On piles or if you’re feeling fancy a concrete pad
- loeg 3y agoThis house is also built of wood, I think -- they just had some stone in the landscaping surrounding the house.
- googlryas 3y agoAnyone can build houses out of more expensive materials, if they're ready to pay for it. America has an abundance of wood so wood framing houses seems sensible.
- astrange 3y agoYou can't make statements like that about America in general. Every piece of it has completely different and extremely opinionated housing regulations. Partly as protectionism for the wood homebuilders, so that nobody tries making them in factories.
- chmod600 3y agoThis is the first I've heard that houses here are made of wood due to some kind of conspiracy.
- jeffbee 3y agoTL;DR it was owned by the people who maintained their house. This is something that worries me about my fire-prone California city, where virtually all of the houses are dilapidated junk that would burst into flames immediately if any embers came by. Wood shingle siding is very common and a lot of people think it is "vernacular" even though such siding was added in a second wave of renovations after all these buildings were made. Letting your house fall to bits, complaining to the city whenever anyone tries to improve or replace a home, and calling the weeds growing right up your walls "a garden" are all local hobbies.
- selimthegrim 3y agoWhich city is this or nearby this so I don’t move there?
- astrange 3y agoStopping your neighbors from doing anything is the main hobby of homeowners in every city in California. But you can't move there anyway, you can't afford it.
- rcme 3y agoThat’s not the tldr at all. The real tldr is steel roof and river stones instead of shrubbery surrounding the house.
- lommaj 3y agoThis home isn't in North America.
- dboreham 3y agoFwiw this is standard stuff here in Montana: the fire people will come out and survey your place (without being asked, they just show up) and tell you what you need to do for better fire protection.
- jeffbee 3y agoWhich part is standard? I randomly zoomed into Helena and I see shrubs growing up the sides of houses and I don't see metal roofs. https://www.google.com/maps/@46.5947587,-112.0458768,3a,81.4y,265.7h,95.78t/data=!3m6!1e1!3m4!1szKd3D25ppwA1h-C_EvcZwA!2e0!7i16384!8i8192?hl=en&entry=ttu https://www.google.com/maps/@46.5947587,-112.0458768,3a,81.4... My local FD in California certified my house annually during the decade I owned it despite the fact that it was surrounded by pines, mostly dead, some touching the house.
- twothamendment 3y agoPeople in the cities with "normal" yards are not thinking about wildfires, not being contacted about it. I think they were referring to people in the middle of nowhere, where yard work is more like forestry work. Every year I get some mail from the state about taking a class to learn how to manage my land/trees. It touches on healthy forests and fires. Areas more like this: https://maps.app.goo.gl/zPqNbX4142vobyMP7 https://maps.app.goo.gl/zPqNbX4142vobyMP7
- kQq9oHeAz6wLLS 3y ago> without being asked, they just show up I know some parts of Montana where that would be...inadvisable.
- twothamendment 3y agoNah, ya gotta be nice to those guys or they start a prescribed burn on the way out. But I know what you mean. There are some roads around me you don't go up unless you know someone there.
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- colordrops 3y agoThis is clickbait and not HN worthy. The intro ends with > Experts say it was likely a little bit of all the above, but that one element of the home’s recent renovation is actually the most affordable and important thing people can do to try and protect their homes. then proceeds without explaining what it is. Such a trashy technique to drive engagement.
- katbyte 3y ago? Did you not scroll down enligh? It mentions steel roof, redwood doors, river stone around the home and removal of bush It gets right into a number of things
- colordrops 3y agoI didn't until you posted this. It was 9 paragraphs down. Clickbait.
- Jedd 3y agoIn Australia, once you get outside urban zones, I think the default building guidelines are no flammable materials on the outside of your house. That includes wood verandahs, posts, balustrades, through to aluminium rather than plastic-based fly screens on windows & doors. Ember attack is a big concern - as noted in TFA you want a clear area around your house, but also sealing off ingress pathways under gutters / eaves and so on. This is all doable, but it's as expensive as you'd expect 'the last 5%' to be. Where I am (250km north west of Sydney AU) in the months before the pandemic, we had a bush fire heading towards us at about 1km a day through national park. It was ~ 10km away when (atypically) heavy rains arrived. We've had 3 years of above-average rainfall, but it's now agreed that el niño / la niña has flipped, so while it's been great for the inland areas of the southern half of the east coast of Australia these last few years, we're left with a lot of organic matter that's rapidly dying off and drying out. It's hardly a novel prediction, but this summer will be spectacular in all the wrong ways in Australia. EDIT: Add link to some of David Holmgren's (co-originator of permaculture fame) work, responding to large bushfires through Victoria AU over the past few decades: https://holmgren.com.au/writing/bushfire-resilient-land-and-climate-care/ https://holmgren.com.au/writing/bushfire-resilient-land-and-...
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]
- 1letterunixname 3y agoMom's house in Butte county was built around 1985 up to whatever California building standards existed at the time. The first owners weren't mechanically included but appeared to have a mix of professional repairs where it mattered and confused DIY otherwise. What helped saved the structure were American city habits of high-water lawns and pushing back the wildland-urban interface. Coober Pedy is a completely subterranean town around the opal mines. These days (not in AU), I'm looking at semi-underground housing structures to cut heating and cooling costs and avert some classes of risks associated with conventional housing. 40-45 C summers for 4 months & -10 C winters will increasingly become too expensive for conventional structures. Plus, there's wind, hail, lightning, tornadic, and wildfire risks to consider. Flooding isn't a problem if building on high ground.
- pengaru 3y agoI read an article about this house immediately after the fires ripped through. Not mentioned in TFA is that the owner saturated everything with water prior to evacuating. Note his large yard full of vegetation didn't catch fire, that alone put a huge buffer zone on that side of his house. Also I'll never understand why asphalt shingles are so popular, metal is better in every way.
- peter422 3y agoMetal is much more expensive as an upfront cost. It may pay off in the long term but most homeowners don't think in a 50 year time horizon.
- bombcar 3y agoMetal can also be excessively loud unless the house was designed for it.
- leesalminen 3y agoWhere I currently live, tin roofs are the norm. And yes, it can be extremely loud in the rainy reason. My wife & I quite like it actually, like a white noise generator. Also, I can easily get out of phone/video calls I don’t want to be on.
- porkbeer 3y agoNot that bad, it is underlayed by thick felt.
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- throw0101a 3y agoProtecting homes against wildfires is a solved problem to a large extent: * https://www.nfpa.org/Public-Education/Fire-causes-and-risks/Wildfire/Preparing-homes-for-wildfire https://www.nfpa.org/Public-Education/Fire-causes-and-risks/... * https://www.readyforwildfire.org/prepare-for-wildfire/get-ready/hardening-your-home/ https://www.readyforwildfire.org/prepare-for-wildfire/get-re... * https://www.firerescue1.com/fire-products/wildland-fire-products/articles/how-to-protect-your-home-from-wildfire-KZm7Dzv9TKMJC5vI/ https://www.firerescue1.com/fire-products/wildland-fire-prod... Most homes go up in flames not from the flames that we often seen in footage (which can generate quite a lot of radiant heat), but rather start from embers that fall onto flammable bits (decks, wood furniture, dry vegetation, large-hole attic vents): * https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gW4ojYJtGbA https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gW4ojYJtGbA * https://www.frontlinewildfire.com/wildfire-news-and-resources/wildfire-embers-how-homes-catch-on-fire/ https://www.frontlinewildfire.com/wildfire-news-and-resource... * https://firesmartbc.ca/why-we-focus-on-embers/ https://firesmartbc.ca/why-we-focus-on-embers/ * https://firesafemarin.org/harden-your-home/how-homes-ignite/ https://firesafemarin.org/harden-your-home/how-homes-ignite/
- routerl 3y agoThat's my understanding also: protect the house from being ignited, rather than "protect the plot from fire". But Americans seem to care more about their land than their house, so maybe they confuse these concepts on purpose.
- minitoar 3y agoNot irrational if you consider that frequently the land is worth a lot more than the house.
- 1letterunixname 3y agoMaybe those aging homeowners in San Jose, CA with Prop 13 or recent transplants with lots of cash who buy them out, but is that the majority of homeowners in America? I think not.
- mildred593 3y ago[flagged]
- honeybadger1 3y agotriggered
- samstave 3y agoOnly an idiot doesnt know that tin-foil is the only defense against JSLs.
- kristopolous 3y agoThe more real climate change becomes, the more fanciful and fantastic the deniers conspiracies get. There's a classic 70 year old book on this as a nice introduction https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/When_Prophecy_Fails https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/When_Prophecy_Fails In climate change's case, they say "it doesn't exist" and then it happens. It's the same social mechanisms regardless. They used to just call scientists alarmists, then fraudsters, and now that it's happening there's witchcraft, shadowy cabals, secret weapons, global conspiracies ... this isn't a self-correcting epistemology, it just goes further off the rails. Check out how wildly complicated covid conspiracies have gotten now that their global government never came, people didn't all drop dead from the vaccine, and everything mostly returned to normal. They're spinning rube goldberg towers of fantastic tales to stay in their delusions.
- da02 3y agoWhat publications or articles do you recommend on climate change as an intro. an what/why it's going on? Do you take anything else besides the vaccine against covid? How do you deal with friends who are anti-covid-vaccine/pro-vitamin?
- piuantiderp 3y agoThere's no denying in the 4bn+ years of Earth, the climate has changed multiple times. Is it changing drastically, today, due to human influence? That's a bigger claim and with good arguments on both sides. Have we forgotten the Climate controversy emails from 2009?
- aaron695 3y ago[dead]
- nerdponx 3y agoWas this a random tragedy, or something we should expect to see more of in areas that aren't historically prone to wildfire? Are we going to have to cut down our trees and gardens in New England to protect against fire?
- davidcuddeback 3y agoA similar thing happened in my community (not historically prone to wildfire) on December 30, 2021. 1000 homes destroyed. Fortunately far fewer casualties. Similar proximate causes (100+ mph winds and historically dry vegetation). I remember some outlets making a big deal about the possibility of this becoming a new normal due to climate change. It was (to my knowledge) the first wildfire attributed to climate change. https://www.colorado.edu/today/2022/01/25/what-marshall-fire-can-teach-us-we-prepare-future-climate-catastrophes https://www.colorado.edu/today/2022/01/25/what-marshall-fire...
- jabroni_salad 3y agoAre you near any forested wildland? Probably the biggest tell.
- nerdponx 3y agoKind of? There are lots of trees everywhere, and plenty of nature preserves. Think suburban NY, CT, MA. Plenty of ponds and wetlands too, but in a drought things can get very dry.
- caesil 3y agoThis happened because of a confluence of several different factors at once: 1. Wildfires that threaten neighborhoods are not particularly common in Hawaii, so people don't have the same level of awareness around defensible space and fire protection, and the government doesn't educate about it / require it 2. Nonnative grasses have taken over swaths of Maui, and they burn more easily than native grasses 3. Maui is currently having a drought and exceptionally dry 4. A hurricane several hundred miles to the south caused very unusual wind conditions: VERY strong winds blowing from the opposite direction wind usually blows 5. The power company's lines are not capable of withstanding the gusts, and they did not shut down the power as a precaution, as happens in other wildfire-prone areas So powerlines blew over, sparks ignited the grass, fire raced through the town.
- js2 3y agoI'm reminded of the home left standing in Mexico Beach, FL after Hurricane Michael. It had been built from concrete to withstand the wind: https://www.icfmag.com/2019/09/mexico-beach-survivor/ https://www.icfmag.com/2019/09/mexico-beach-survivor/
- Ozzie_osman 3y agoI don't understand why more houses in areas prone to wind/fire aren't built from concrete. There are large parts of the world where that is the default due to lack of wood.
- ocdtrekkie 3y agoNote that fire can and does compromise concrete structures anyways, and more crucially, concrete structures tend to be significantly more expensive to build. A standard wood frame house is insanely cheap to build the structure of, and unsurprisingly, consumers tend to want to build a lot very cheaply. Finally, there are only two types of concrete: Concrete that has cracked, and concrete that hasn't cracked yet.
- SergeAx 3y agoFor several decades I cannot wrap my head around the fact that US houses are built literally from sticks, alabaster and paper, and still an order of magnitude more expensive that typical Europe concrete/masonry house.
- jandrewrogers 3y agoThe prevalence of strong earthquakes across large parts of the US explains almost all of it. It is very difficult and expensive to engineer a building with structural masonry that can survive magnitude 7-8+ earthquakes, and the building code requires it in many places (M 8.5 where I live). They used to build a lot of masonry buildings in the US just like Europe using the same techniques but they stopped doing it after they were repeatedly flattened in earthquakes. Strong earthquakes mean you can only really build with wood or steel frames, so that is what they build with. Steel framed construction is significantly more expensive to buy, build, and maintain, so it isn’t commonly used in houses since they don’t need the extra strength. You don’t need masonry to be fire resistant. Large brush fires would drop burning embers all over your house when I lived in the southwestern US, but the ubiquitous stucco-and-tile exteriors were largely unaffected.
- swader999 3y agoI did the same for my house, the other thing is to install mesh screens around all the air vents. Don't know what to do about the deck though. Could put a sprinkler on it but I'm sure they'd cut power if it came down to it.
- jahewson 3y agoSprinkler does not require power - just water pressure.
- Dalewyn 3y agoAnd that water pressure is usually provided by an electric pump. Purely gravity fed fresh water supplies aren't as common as you might think.
- runjake 3y agoAnd that electric pump is often backed by a generator at the pump site. At least in the US. Many US jurisdictions mandate a generator and at the federal level they are “highly encouraged.”
- notatoad 3y agowhich works as long as the pump site isn't actually in the fire, or the diesel supplies aren't removed to reduce fuel sources in the evacuation zone.
- runjake 3y agoThis is why engineers build plenty of defensible space around water and power plants. At least in the western US. It sounds like they may do it differently where you live.
- antman 3y agoYou could maintain pressure for last moment without electricity if water passes through pressure (bladder) tank before going to irrigation
- 1letterunixname 3y agoIt's all too common for narratives like these, i.e., "It's god's will" or "a miracle", because it allows people to dismiss their part of being unprepared since external locus-of-control frees them of the responsibilities of blame and agency. There are no "miracle homes", only preparedness and probability. In the 2018 Camp Fire, my mom's home was the only one left standing on the block because due to multiple factors: - Lack of fuel (including trees and debris) adjacent to the structure(s) - Proper building codes ensuring use of less flammable products - Distance of setbacks around the structure(s) - Almost an acre / 4k [m^2] of irrigated lawn on all sides Firefighters may have helped, but it's difficult to say because there was zero information for months. * When residents were allowed to return, 3 360L plastic wheelie bins were reduced to 1m diameter / 4mm high "puddles" by radiant heating alone. An outdoor shed built like a residential structure was reduced to a toxic crater, including melting steel tools into nothing. 2/3 of a cord of firewood burned near the back leaving a 2" / 5 cm discolored divot in aggregate concrete. Half of an aluminum ladder was left like it had hit lava. Embers left charring here and there but they didn't ignite. The rain gutters were packed full of pine needles that I asked my mom's now ex to solve who kept promising but never delivering. Also, loggers came in from all over and took trees at random from private and public property without the express consent of owners because of disaster resource harvesting since tree trunks were worth thousands each. Mostly Pacific ponderosa pines that stood since before Washington crossed the Potomac, each with 10k's of holes bored by woodpeckers getting at the damn beetles. Instead, the skyline was transformed into a haphazard, sterile moonscape construction site. * Like Lele, there was also no alarm and the county sheriff defended his inaction and lack of preparedness. The Amber Alert system could've been used by the county sheriff or the local police department, cell phone service was never disrupted. Also, there is a canard being promulgated by the media about not using the tsunami system in Lele, which would've been pointless. I'm sure they had an Amber alert system too, but it wouldn't have made any difference because their cell phone towers and power grid crumbled almost immediately. Hawaiian officials claim they sent out text messages but the cell towers were already down while it was being sent: so too little, too late. Like Paradise, the power company in Hawaii should've known about the weather conditions and turned off the power in dry conditions with high wind.
- rhaps0dy 3y ago
- pierrec 3y agoExperts say it was likely a little bit of all the above, but that one element of the home’s recent renovation is actually the most affordable and important thing people can do to try and protect their homes. PART 2: A PAINSTAKING RENOVATION Millikin and his wife, Dora Millikin, fell in love with the Front Street house several years ago... Wow. This kind of narrative cliffhanger makes sense in a thriller. It does not make sense in an article on how to prevent houses from burning down. I'm not going to blame the author, since this is more of a cultural and institutional problem, but this article reads like a caricature.
- jdlshore 3y agoThis is a type of article called a “human-interest story,” and isn’t intended to teach you how to protect your home from fire. Instead, it’s soft news intended to create an emotional connection to the impact of the fires. This sort of story has been a staple of news writing for decades. It’s not new, and it’s not a sign of any sort of cultural problem. (Except, perhaps, HN’s cultural problem of middlebrow dismissals.) https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Human-interest_story https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Human-interest_story
- brutusborn 3y agoI’m probably the HN dismissive you are talking about, but I don’t understand the purpose of writing something that establishes a negative emotional reaction to something without engaging with how that something can be fixed. It’s like saying “I’m happy to put a lot of work into making my readers feel bad for person X, but I can’t be bothered researching how to help person X or others who could become X in the future.” What am I missing? On second thoughts maybe it’s useful to separate the emotional articles from the pragmatic ones. Maybe this author is better at empathy and not good at problem solving.
- minitoar 3y agoYou might've missed the part of the story where the author includes quotes from a subject matter expert about how to address the problem.
- paradox460 3y agoI lived in Los Alamos during the Cerro Grande fire, and remember friends who lost everything, and their immediate neighbors who lost nothing Defensible space and choice in building material plays some part, but ultimately there are so many factors that it's basically random. People who had big old piñon trees right up against their house wouldn't see a bit of damage, while the guy next to them, who had a xeriscape yard, had their house burned down to the foundation
- KevinMS 3y agoI'm very skeptical. I'm sure river stones and steel roofs help in some situations, but there are cars in that picture that look like they were nuked that have steel roofs and are surrounded by pavement.
- Sparkyte 3y agoVery lucky even with flame resistant material being down wind of the heat could've still destroyed it.
- more_corn 3y agoI’ll save you a click. Nothing combustible within 5 feet of the house. Not done as a fire break, but to protect the home from water runoff from the landscaping. Journalists who write like this should be kicked in the dick.
- thedaly 3y ago> In the morning, a friend called and sent them a picture from a helicopter flyover of Lahaina. Every structure had been destroyed in the area. But there, in the midst of the destruction, was the seemingly untouched red roof of Millikin’s home. > Millikin said he and his wife were overcome with emotion. > “We started crying,” he said. “I felt guilty. We still feel guilty.” The survivor's guilt has got to be tough.