Recently, Los Angeles Fire, 2023 Columbia Climate School and High economics report Forest fire easing strategy It provides valuable insights about what needs to be reduced to reduce the risk of fire.
According to the report, forest fires always occurred naturally and played an important role in forest health. The fire burns a dead vegetation, releases the nutrients of organic matter, stimulates the growth of some seeds, and kills the pest. However, since many people settled near the forest land today, fire suppression rather than fire management by reducing the defined burns and flammable materials has become the main way for the US Forest Service to deal with fire risks.
We talked about the best strategy and strategy to reduce the risk of fire with the co -author of the report and the MA Climate and Social Program Officer of the Climate School. Her research focuses on the risk zone in the western US forest fire.
Did LA prepared for this fire?
no. The LA fires began with forest fires and became very quickly urban fires and structural fires. In many forest fires, the source of the most common home loss and damage does not come from forest fires. It comes from the burning embers in the neighbor’s house. This ember becomes fuel and the house goes fast from the victims of the fire to the owner of fire. This new era, combined with the increase in the risk of fire due to climate change as the number of people living in Wildland Urban Interface increased, created a condition in which forest fires become structural fires and urban fires due to forest fires. When we rethink how to manage this type of risk, we need to draw out the expertise of urban disaster management and forest disaster management.
What is the most effective fire preparation strategy?
All studies show that home strengthening is the best fire preparation strategy. Family hardening means to work on real estate to reduce the transfusion by management materials management, landscape planning around the house, placing the pile of wood correctly, selecting appropriate siding for the house, and determining how close the house is. California is a national leader of the essential building law, and the California Architectural Code 7A is the most powerful example of building law in the United States. This requires a fire resistance material and sets the minimum standard for building buildings in areas at risk of forest fires. Architecture and vegetation care.
So are they prepared for your questions? In some ways, they are most prepared because they have the most aggressive building methods throughout the state for new architecture. The problem is that 80-90%of real estate is exempted from the building code because the law passed in 2008 only applies to new architecture. This does not include a modified structure that existed before 2008. It is unimaginable to strengthen all the structures in California, including modifications.
But homeowners must strengthen their homes to reduce their risks.
Yes, let’s say that some of the problems here are 10 neighbors around me. If I strengthen all of this house at a high cost of my property-I will come to give technical advice, and I move the pile of trees, turn the house again, and change the ingredients. But if no one of the other 10 neighbors work, the effect of my efforts will be reduced. Therefore, home hardening is actually a problem of collective action. We need to start seeing the entire community to get some of these policies. Even mandatory building laws do not bring us, so we need to think about better incentives for strengthening home.
Some organizations such as Firewise (https://www.nfpa.org/EDUCATION-NE-DEREARCH/WILDFIRE/Firewise-usa) We are trying to cure the community scale. The village can be decided to be a governor community, which means that they have strengthened their homes. They think about roads and escape paths, corridors of utility, and relationships with public land, then have a shooting sign at the entrance of the village. Sometimes this name deserves a specific subsidy, so it can be an incentive.
Are there any other places besides California, where there is a building method to reduce the risk of fire?
There are examples of building methods at the level of other local governments that are almost entirely entirely. They exist at much smaller size, usually applied to houses of mapped dangerous zones. These risk maps are based on past data, but we know that historical data is no longer an accurate predictor of the future due to climate change. We started moving to modeling in the future. This can be found to be more useful, but the first idea is that modeling is a risk of burning burns throughout the United States, especially in the western United States, with more than one -third of the West, especially in the West. no see. Therefore, there are many forest lands that are risk of forest fires.
What can the federal government do to reduce the risk of fire in land?
If you live in the western state near the forest, it is possible that the federal government is a parcel of public land. For example, 52%of the California land -based lands are made of public land, meaning that only the federal government has the authority to modify the property. The federal government can reduce fuel reductions such as burns or mechanical processing published to reduce fuel loads. Individual owners and neighbors cannot.
The problem is that we now have the spread of houses sitting directly on public land. There is not much room for fire. The defined fire actually works well in the back streets that can lower the density of the forest and reduce flammable materials, but often do nothing to reduce the risk of families on the border of public land.
In addition, there is little public support for the fires specified due to the actual risk and the recognized risk. In fact, less than 1% of the prescribed fire escapes, but it is headline news and does not want a private homeowner to be in the neighborhood.
Another barrier to the extended use of the defined fire is the same weather condition that leads these fires from the beginning. You can’t get a permission to start a defined fire when you’re too hot, wind or dry. If the climate changes, most days are hot, dry, wind, and more likely to escape.
How does insurance companies deal with all these fire risks?
Most of California’s insurance policy occurs, and most of the policies do not distinguish between urban fires and forest fires. In many states, the standard fire policy is mandatory, so the insurance policy must cover fire including forest fires. This is often the insurers in the position of actual exposure and vulnerability. [when they must pay out for damages or loss].
As a result, insurance companies are dropping policy holders. They have withdrawn from all over the west, are raising premiums, and more and more furniture in this high -risk area cannot be insured. As a result, this assumption ends with insurance of the Last Resort of Last Resort. [Fair Access to Insurance Requirements are state-mandated insurance plans that provide coverage to individuals and businesses unable to obtain insurance in the regular market.] This policy is never to protect the whole state. Many disasters without their own faults have not affected their homes but are not ready, but they wanted to buy real estate and protect their owners who need insurance to receive mortgage. Insurers in the state can say ‘no’ to guarantee someone, but thanks to the Lord they must contribute to the fund that supports and acquires the fair plan.
Another problem is that the state is artificially lowering premiums. California did this. They had a law that illegally made insurance companies withdrawing your policies for one year after the fire. They are doing it for justifiable reasons. People who have just become homeless do not want to drop insurance policy. But this means that an insurance company can no longer use dangerous reflection prices. They must use the government’s set price. The insurance contractor then reflects politics, not the actual risk determined by the insurance company, so there is no advantage of a clear risk signal. Allowing risk reflection prices in insurance can be premiums for many low -income families and intermediate income households, and only millions of cards can afford. The government continues to try to prevent it, but I think the situation is getting worse in the long run because it is to lower the price and cover the risk.
Can local governments do anything to reduce fire risk?
Zone designation occurs at the city or city level. But I do not know the case of the US essential forest fire -oriented policy. There are some examples of suggestion and shot down. For example, when I lived in Colorado, I made a proposal for an aggressive zone setting in a local government, but the real estate broker opposed it. This is because the real estate value of the area is value as soon as it is a dangerous area. out. The debt of the city. The ability to collect money by local governments comes from property tax, and if it declares half of its high risks, it is a property tax tank. Such financial costs are the actual costs of hitting the housing owner and the city immediately.
What can you learn from the LA fire?
What we see in terms of danger is that it is difficult to understand the strategy that has been relied on for too long on the chart. We need to know what it works and where it is. I really want to see what we learn from California fire. How many of the homes have survived the reinforcement work? How is it compared to a house that doesn’t. Living on fire has long been a mantra all over the United States, but there has never been life and death. We are facing a kind of basic inventory of where people can build and how to build.
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