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Just don't make houses out of flammable materials. Easy. Exterior walls must be cinder block filled with concrete and rebar or poured concrete with lots of reba
by UltraSane 2y ago
Just don't make houses out of flammable materials. Easy. Exterior walls must be cinder block filled with concrete and rebar or poured concrete with lots of rebar and perhaps fiber reinforcement. Roofs must be metal or ceramic or stone.
- nrki 2y agoMost rural houses in Australia are built this way. They still burn down. I don't think anyone really understands how intense wildfires can get when fanned by wind. It will destroy almost anything. See: Black Saturday bushfires, Australia. > "it really made no difference whether the houses were brick or timber. In fact, with the speed of the fire front some timber houses fared better than brick as it moved too fast for the houses to catch, but the bricks exploded from the sudden change in temperature." > "When you have a fire front coming through at 800C it'll melt your window seals and aluminum window frames. The glass will fall out then everything is on fire.
- UltraSane 2y agoIn the LA fire most home fires were ignited by the trillions of red hot embers driven by the wind. If these embers can ignite a home then the house is lost. So the key is to make the house from materials that resist ignition from wind driven embers.
- harimau777 2y agoWould cinder blocks and concrete be a good fit for standing up to the earthquakes that California is prone to?
- UltraSane 2y agoIf designed correctly they could be. It is an interesting actuarial problem which risk should be mitigated in home design.