Short Wave - The Complex Decisions Around Rebuilding After A Wildfire

Episode Date: February 1, 2021

The year 2020 saw a record-breaking wildfire season. With those wildfires came many destroyed homes. Rebuilding with fire-resistant materials reduces the risk of future fires burning down a house, but as NPR science correspondent Lauren Sommer explains, only three Western states require building with fire-resistant materials. Without such improvements, communities face increased risks with the next fire.Read Lauren's reporting on rebuilding after a wildfire.Email the show at [e-mail] pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for sponsorship and to manage your podcast sponsorship preferences.NPR Privacy Policy

You're listening to Shortwave from NPR. Hey, everybody. Emily Kwong here with NPR climate correspondent Lauren Summer. Hello, Lauren. Hey, Emily. So your story today starts with some detective work. Yeah. And you might think of it as climate change forensics, because it's the kind of thing that unfortunately is becoming more important as climate change makes wildfires and floods worse. The story starts back. in October after the glass fire exploded in Northern California. You know, and like a lot of fires that broke records last year, it moved incredibly fast. A team from the Insurance Institute for Building and Home Safety was sifting through these piles of charred rubble, you know, just what remains of some people's houses. They were looking for clues about how some homes can survive wildfires because the weird thing that happens sometimes is that one house,

will burn to the ground while the one next door is totally fine. Yeah, how does that even work? Because if there's just a wall of flames coming towards a neighborhood, it doesn't seem like anything would survive. Yeah, you're right. I mean, that you can't do much about. But most houses don't burn down that way. They're ignited by embers blown ahead of the fire.

So most houses don't burn down from the fire itself, but are kind of ignited by those glowing sparks you might see floating in the air? Yeah, kind of like what you'd see from a campfire, but these are blown up to a mile ahead of a wildfire. And if one of those lands on a wood roof or maybe there's some leaves and a gutter, the house will ignite. But if you build a house or rebuild a house with fire-resistant materials, it reduces the chances that that will happen. Sounds like something a lot of people would want to do or want for their homes in wildfire country. Yeah, I mean, you'd think that. But only three Western states require that fire-resistant states require that fire-resistant.

materials be used in these kind of high-risk areas. Wow. And that's because those rules have been fought by homebuilders groups. So today on the show, what communities can do to protect themselves from extreme wildfires in a warming climate? And why thousands of people who lost their homes last year won't have to rebuild with fire-resistant materials, leaving them at greater risk in the future. I'm Emily Kwong, and you're listening to Shortwave from NPR.

So Lauren Summer, we will get into fire-resistant materials in a minute. But let's first start with the detectives you were talking about, folks that assess a home after a fire to determine what difference building materials may or may not have made. Yeah. And it's really hard to figure out because, as you might imagine, you know, after wildfire, there's just not a lot left sometimes. But what that team was doing, you know, basically these forensic engineers in Santa Rosa, was looking for those few telling examples. One of them, you know, Daniel Gorham, he saw where an ember had landed in the mulch kind of around a house, and it burned the mulch and burned all the way up to the deck. But the deck was made of resistant materials. And so the end result was, yes, the mulch burned and yes, there was a little bit of damage,

but the deck didn't ignite. And that's important because if the deck ignites, we know that that's a severe fire exposure that likely would have ignited the home. Those are the clues they're looking for. And actually, you know, after a fire, one of the clues they really want to find, is a trampoline. What? Why a trampoline? Yeah, I mean, what happens is the embers land on the trampoline surface and, you know, they create these little burn marks, which is a record of how big the embers were and how many were falling. And so from there, they can tell, you know, how different

building materials handled those conditions. These detectives are very good. All right, so we've talked about building in deck with fire resistant materials. And I'm wondering if you could talk a little more about what that means. What kinds of materials are important? Yeah, I mean, some of this is a little bit obvious, right? Like, if your roof is made of wood, it's not great because the embers can kind of catch in there and start burning. And that's true for a lot of your house. You know, there's stuff like fire resistant fiber cement siding on the side of a house. That can really help. Not having flammable brush or trees up against your house because, you know, those can catch and then ignite. But there's also these really small things that can make a difference. Like your attic vents.

Which I'm guessing that you, you know, like me and many other people, have never really considered. Yeah, no, I don't even know what attic vents are. Right. There are those openings near the roof line of a house that allow for ventilation and air to get in. Okay. And because of the way the winds blow in a fire, it can actually blow embers right through the vent. And they land in your attic. They actually catch your house on fire from the inside.

So it's recommended that you cover them up with a fine screen mesh to prevent that. Wow. There's just, it just seems like there are so many ways a house can burn down. Yeah. And, you know, I should say there's no guarantee that using these fire resistant materials will save your house. It's just about reducing the risk. Because even this year, you know, I stood with homeowners who had lost everything. You know, there's just literally nothing left. Their house is gone. And the house next door is just completely untouched. Lauren, you'd think that states across the West would have building codes to provide? this kind of damage, but you said that only three do. So which are those? Well, California is kind of the leader on this. It's been on the forefront. Their policy has been around for more of in a decade, which basically requires that these wildfire building codes be used in high-risk areas. So basically everyone who lost a home last year in California will have to rebuild a safer home. But we did an analysis at NPR about what other states and local governments are doing, and very few have similar. policies. You know, two other states that had some of the largest fires in their recorded history

last year, which are Oregon and Colorado, they don't have codes. They don't have state codes at all? Why is that? Yeah, well, in Oregon, fire officials have been trying to get similar building codes passed. The first item is item 7A. About two years ago, they took a proposal to the state's building code council, you know, to pass codes that were similar to Californians. You know, because Oregon is seeing more extreme fires. Hotter weather is drying out the vegetation more, which makes it more flammable. And you've got more and more people moving into places that are prone to wildfires. That's something that Ralph Sartain of Ashland Fire and Rescue mentioned at that hearing.

We're pushing further and further into the mountains, but we're not doing anything to protect the buildings that we're getting and we're getting wildfires and wildfires. But home builders that were on the state's Code Review Council, like Janet Lewis, they questioned the need for wildfire codes. I think it's unnecessary. I think it's time to allow Oregonians the freedom to choose where they want to live and the personal responsibility to construct their homes to work with that choice. The wildfire building codes did get approved, but they're optional. So cities and counties can choose whether to adopt them locally. And how did the firefighting community take that?

I think they were really frustrated. I spoke to Ralph Sartain about that. We would love to have seen it as a statewide adoption, but we could barely get it passed. as voluntarily applied inside of a city or inside of a county, the home builders would not allow it in any way, shape, or form on a statewide basis. Is that because, and I'm kind of just taking a guess here, is that because home builders are worried about the cost? Are, like, are these fire-resistant materials more expensive? Yeah, that's what they talked about a lot. I mean, home builders in Oregon were saying it could add several thousand dollars to the cost of the home.

But here's the thing. In some cases, it can be cheaper because it's possible to use resistant. materials that aren't as expensive. They're actually more affordable. And when I spoke to the Oregon Home Builders Association, they did seem more open to this after everything that's happened last year. Yeah. And after the optional codes were approved, did any cities in Oregon decide to adopt them? One city has, the city of Medford, and then one other county and city are kind of in the process of adopting them. Potentially, you know, maybe more will join them. But, you know, more than 5,000 homes and buildings were lost in Oregon last year, and none of them will be required to use these fire

resistant materials, you know, based on our analysis. Lauren, you also mentioned that Colorado was grappling with this question, so what are they doing? Yeah, Colorado had a very similar story. In 2013, there was a state task force that put together report, you know, that recommended how the state could live with wildfires. And, of course, one of those recommendations was wildfire building codes. But that report came out, and it really went, nowhere. The Home Builders Association there lobbied against it because they said it shouldn't be a statewide policy. They wanted local governments to decide from themselves. And that's how it is today in Colorado. Some cities have wildfire codes, but, you know, next door, the homeowners don't

have to meet anything. So it's kind of this patchwork of risk. So even if in these states, governments aren't implementing building codes, homeowners could still choose to use fire resistant materials on their own. And did any of the homeowners you spoke to plan to do that? Yeah, it really depends. You know, I did speak to some who were really worried about the next wildfire and they do plan to use these materials. But for other people, it's just really challenging. You know, a lot of people just don't know about this. And maybe they didn't even know they were at risk of a wildfire in the first place. A lot of people are underinsured. So that means they don't really have enough money and resources and are having to make compromises

already on rebuilding their home. And this is a long and painful process. I mean, you're displaced. You're dealing with a lot of stress. And so it's a lot to ask people to kind of add this to what they're already going through. Yeah, it's a really tough situation. It takes homeowners and governments to change how wildfire affects a community. But I guess there's this idea that a big wildfire would be enough to change things for next time, but maybe not. Yeah, I think that's always the question, right? Like, is this the wake-up call? I think one thing that's really clear is that, you know, people, you know, governments, institutions, they all make climate change decisions every day. But we don't really call them that. You know, in that hearing in Oregon, you didn't really hear the words climate change being spoken. You know, and these are decisions, you know, from the big to the very small that have lasting effects on how ready communities are for climate change because houses last for many, many decades, right? So I think what I'm to see is whether the really extreme devastation we saw last year is just going to make it harder to ignore climate change in these types of discussions. Lauren, thank you so much for bringing us

this reporting. Yeah, thanks, Emily. This episode was produced by Rebecca Ramirez, edited by Giselle Grayson, and fact-checked by Rasha Uridi. Josh Newell was the audio engineer for the episode. I'm Emily Kwong. Thanks for listening to Shortwave from NPR.