No one with a heart can view the terrible destruction and mounting death toll of the latest California wildfires without wondering how this can be fixed. My interest in straw bale construction was initially focused on the energy saving and tree saving potential of this kind of building. This can be seen in
my previous blog post. Five years later the drought-enhanced fires and insect infestation mentioned in that post have only gotten worse as comments below will show. I hope this blog post offers some helpful fire oriented solutions both on a personal level and on a political level.
These runaway wildfires are a stark illustration of tragedy that can result from poor or misguided stewardship of our land. Whether or not climate change is primarily responsible for creating such fire conditions, it is certain that man has not kept up with practical countermeasures. As population grows, more and more people are moving into vulnerable areas. Many are basing their home construction and land management on past conditions, not building or maintaining based on the new, more dangerous reality.
The bottom line appears to be change, get out, or die!
Below you will find information on possible causes, and general solutions, as well as the contribution straw bale construction can make in this fire danger situation. As I continue to follow this issue I will be adding links and updated facts and information, so please check again.
11/26/18 -
The current death toll is 88. This includes 85 for the Camp/Paradise and 3 elsewhere with almost 300 still unaccounted for. The article here has links to aerial photographs of the damage to assist emergency personnel in their search for victims.
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/3705385/posts?q=1&;page=1
This site has some interesting comments on saving lives and the management of forests to prevent these wildfires.
For example, this comment on safe evacuation policies:
"
There are 4 roads out of Paradise, one was covered in fire (Pentz), one had officers turning people around at the north side of town (Skyway) to join the long line of people trying to get out (rather than letting them go through Magalia up to the 32), Skyway which is a two lane road through the narrow gap at the south side of town (designed for 1,000 cars an hour, not the 8,000+ who were all trying to use it at once) and Clark Rd which out of the area LEOs were trying to prevent people from using, incorrectly identifying it as being dangerous.
Adding to it was people north of Paradise also evacuating along Skyway heading south.
A lot of areas of Paradise are long dead end roads that dump into ‘main roads’ like Pearson which should have been turned into a one way only (west) street for evacuation and dumped down Clark (south) as a one way out.
These are the types of things that town and county OES departments are SUPPOSED to figure out AND practice.
Adding to the situation was the 2006 fire which threatened the town with a long evacuation and little damage - many figured they’d be just fine and authorities were overstating the danger, or they’d be safe again."
This comment from someone fighting the fires:
"I feel a little guilty on two fronts; one is making a tidy sum working some of these fires (I earn it), and two, looking at these areas afterwards (Not the homes, but the wild land) and thinking how much better it looks (I do remember finding animals who tried to bury their heads in the ground to escape. Those things are heartbreaking, to think of the terror level they experienced. It is even more heartbreaking to think of the people who suffer a similar fate.).
Some of these areas, heck, most of these areas are so insanely overgrown they are disasters waiting to happen. We had a heck of a fight here on the Nuns Fire. It started close to us and we had no time to even consider fleeing. We had prepared, clearing much vegetation and having a plan. We were in a defensible area. Sadly, most of these homes are in disastrous locations with wooden decks and siding, woodchip landscaping, plants against the house, wood piles nearby, palm tree, conifers, etc.. They are a recipe for disaster and in one of these wild situations (The Camp Fire was burning at 80 football fields a minute, at its peak.), crews have no choice but to bypass these death traps.
Sadly, I see people rebuilding the same way. A wooden fence is nothing but a fuse to your house. The radiant heat from your lawn in one of these is so great that it can ignite your curtains through the sealed, closed glass window. Wild stuff. And once they are going, they create their own wind storms."
[In addition, another person suggested that a lot of brush and trees needs to be cut well back from these escape routes so they don't become tunnels of fire.]
[In one of the number of books you can find at Google, "straw bale construction methods," I saw a wall (used as a fence) made by stacking straw bales several courses high and then covering completely with plaster/stucco/cement. These have completely survived wildfires.]
[There were several interesting and
useful comments regarding government regulations and forest management. It appears that many more prescribed burns are needed to clear out the brush, and that smoke and air quality concerns mean that they are only being done with light breezes which can get strong and start an uncontrolled burn. Much more could be burned off if it could be down in calm air conditions. Of course then smoke would be more of an issue, but
look what they have now, way, way worse.]
"The hills all around us burnt as well as 30-40 houses all due to this Woolsey fire (Simi Valley to Malibu). This year we had a very hot summer and the previous year there was lots of rain and created a "superbloom", things grew like crazy.
Lots of that brush was dry and perfect for burning. I'm not sure how realistic it would have been to do a controlled burn of most of the open spaces. The risk of a controlled burn turning into a real fire seems very high. Even clearing the brush by hand probably increases the chance of somebody accidentally sparking a fire.
The county or whoever does it seem to do a good job of maintaining the roads and trails so that the fire fighters can get back there quickly.
I go for walks all the time in these areas that burnt and have been concerned that this was bound to happen. Its just so frickin dry here for most of the year.
There most certainly are some aspects of this issue that have to do with political priorities ($7 billion for a train to no where - no super tanker airplanes California owns). A lot of the problem seems like we live in an area that is very prone to this happening.
Building codes probably need to be strengthen to make the houses more fire resistant. Those canter-levered houses on the sides of very steep hills in Malibu need to be forbidden regardless of how rich the person is. I have heard many of those types of homes were destroyed as its easy for the fire to get up underneath them.
There seems to be also a bit of a fatalist streak to it all - at some point its going to be your turn in the barrel."
"There's very little risk when the fires are started in low mixing weather. The problem is that CARB disallows burning in low mixing weather because someone might cough from the smoke. The regulations are absolutely insane, only allowing controlled burning (natural and prescribed) when it is unsafe i.e. windy. By then it is much too late.
Furthermore CalFire wasted money putting out minor fires where it was still safe, instead of starting more controlled fires in high risk areas. They are completely incompetent. CARB has blood on their hands. Likewise Butte county which took already bad CARB regulations and made them more onerous, only allowing 6,000 acres to be burned in controlled fires (out of more than a million). That was woefully inadequate.
You are correct that the super El Nino created a huge amount of fuel. That was the source of the problem and the only solution was fire, either sooner or later. California chose later. They chose badly."
"CARB regulations:
https://www.arb.ca.gov/smp/regs/RevFinRegwTOC.pdf
Butte County's implementation of the regs, including their insane 6,000 acre limit:
https://www.arb.ca.gov/drdb/but/curhtml/r300.pdf There are a very limited number of days mainly in spring where CARB allows the fire (windy enough) but while it is still safe (not too windy or unpredictable), and there are more than a million acres that might need burning.
The results of the policy:
https://lao.ca.gov/Publications/Report/3798 This report greatly softpeddles the problem which is insane "air quality" regulations. They say
"The VMP treated 17,500 acres with prescribed burns in 2017, somewhat more than the average of approximately 13,000 acres treated per year since 1999. This represents a decrease from about 30,000 acres treated per year from 1982 through 1998. This decrease is due to several factors, including (1) an increase in the amount of planning and documentation required for prescribed burns due to stricter air quality regulations..."
Some people blamed excessive efforts to save the endangered spotted owl:
"I think you all have a fundamental lack of understanding when it comes to logging. Undergrowth is removed and if possible chipped for use in co-gen plants which provides energy to run the sawmill and many times supplement the energy use of neighboring towns.Unless the section of forest [is] diseased, only some trees are harvested, leaving most of the big trees behind. This clears the undergrowth which allows the bigger trees more access to nutrients. While I may give you the fact that Malibu did not suffer from the spotted owl, to think Paradise and neighboring areas did not is simply untrue. Many sawmills near Paradise have been shut down during my lifetime.
And to think that logging is not fundamental in forest stewardship...well again just a fundamental lack of understanding. Wood is a valuable resource, and it will come out of an overgrown forest, either on a bed of a logging truck or through fire."
And: "Forgot to add that we all know that the drought here in CA a few years back really helped the beetles tear up a lot of our trees. These dead trees were obviously a fire hazard so work began to remove them.
Of course, due to CA laws and the destruction of our logging industry, there were not enough sawmills left to handle them all. Many sawmills, who were hanging by an thread and were downsized to survive, were now having to turn away logs. Many were sent to be chipped or cut into firewood. Perfectly useable board foot down the drain due to years of CA regulations purposely designed to kill the logging/lumber industry.
I have always though the best place to ask about these forest fires is forestry guys. Go find some, talk with them, and you may just find that forest stewardship relies fairly heavy on the logging/lumber industry."
Of course: "The last thing you would do in your timber stands is allow ladder fuels to grow and die in a wet/dry season like they have out west. After the first year of growth (2016) you would light up all the growth to remove it. By 2017 it would have been a bit late, but still doable in low wind conditions (when CARB bans any kind of prescriptive or natural fire due to "pollution"). By this year the 2016 growth would start to put your trees at risk.
Instead of properly managing the extra 2016 fuel growth, California maintained their insane "air quality" regulations. I see no evidence that they have learned anything from the Napa [fire] disaster last fall."
Was the spotted owl issue related to
clear cutting of forests or selective cutting related to managing a producing forest? Some of my thoughts on this question.
After inheriting 20 acres of southern Illinois forest, my husband and I spent 4 hours with a forester. He explained how a forest could be managed by clearing out small trees like 5” or less in diameter a certain number of feet from the straightest target tree so it could grow. Also selecting straight large trees and how many board feet might be harvested, but leaving crooked trees to continue to seed the forest, and feed and house wildlife. He identified productive trees to keep like walnut and hickory and even pawpaw. That is very different from clear cutting. Small logging mills can handle that work, but I suspect the clear cut guys are bigger and just as happy to put the small timers out of business. After taking notes while being educated by the forester I went to two sawmills to find out what the different trees identified might be worth if cut. [There they said I could mark the specific trees I wanted them to cut.] I also determined that one of the owners would probably be much more careful pulling out the downed trees than the other one, by pulling them out by a better route and not destroying so much undergrowth like berry bushes and small trees we might want to keep."
And a final word at this link: "I would advise "All" if they have not done so already to get on their favorite satellite viewing app or site, with street level viewing included, and examine "Paradise" while
views showing the pre-fire condition still exist. [This link has a pre and post fire view.] Include some outlying areas too.
Add in the lack of proper forest and land management (grass and scrub lands need to be included).
Then think hot, dry, windy (happens a lot in much of CA), and "spark upwind".
The entire bullet train budget [a multi billion project for a high speed train between 2 california cities] could be added to current CA fire
fighting expenditures, and, while more could be caught "in time", disastrous fires would still occur. An awful lot of prevention needs to be done, and
many people would not like to live in remade "safe" places. "
Although written in 2007 this article on
fire resistance of straw bale housing makes a number of interesting points, and has a lot of constructive comments. In the comment quoted below this person whose straw bale home was destroyed by wildfire, points out that had it been treated after the wildfire had moved on it probably could have been saved.
"
My wife and I recently (April, 2007) completed our straw bale home south of Hot Springs, S.D. We live in Wyoming, so it was really just a get away place for us, and several of our friends. On July 7th there was a lightening strike in the canyon to the southwest of our property. The local firefighters were unable to fight the original fire because of its location, and opted to wait until it came up out of the canyon and try to contain it. When the fire erupted out of the canyon several hours later it was a virtual tornado of fiery destruction. The path it took over the next 24 hours was more typical of a tornado than a conventional fire. It spared some homes, and completely destroyed others within minutes. Eyewitness accounts tell of the approaching flames spontaneously combusting houses in their path, leaving only smoking foundations in their wake. No house managed to survive a direct assault by the fire. Most were consumed within moments. While our house was destroyed in the fire, it survived for more than 14 hours. Our stucco exterior was complemented with a steel roof, facias, and sofits. The surrounding trees had been pruned up, all brush had been removed from the site, and all the surrounding trees had been thinned. I have determined that the house burned from the inside out. The furniture, cabinets, interior wood work, post and beam structure, second floor framing, stairs, roof framing, and all the interior partitions burned out….completely, leaving only ash behind. Once the framework burned sufficiently to allow the roof to collapse, the walls came down with it and then the straw smoldered, tho never was burned and consumed.
I am convinced that had the fire department been able to get to the house, after the flame wall had passed, they could have put out the interior fire, and the house would be standing today.
All in all I was quite proud of the way the house stood up to the fire, and I am in the process of using the insurance money to build another straw bale house here in Wyoming. What a totally awesome technology. I would highly recommend it to anyone.
Andrew, keep up your good work. The planet needs it."
Retrofitting an existing structure and straw bale building in general
Anyone who might wish to consider a straw bale building can find plenty of information on construction and useful books at Google. Many people are attracted by the environmental factors of low energy costs for heating and cooling and the rapid renewability of straw versus trees. For those who have a vulnerable conventional building, a straw bale retrofit can be considered. This is basically covering the exterior with straw bales and covering the bale exterior with stucco, cement, or plaster. In a fire zone, roof, door, window and sofits need specialized attention. The personal experience quoted above refers to using a steel roof, facias, and sofits. Preferably, the building's exterior should be relatively flat and simple, and the windows not too large. Below is an evaluation I did for a friend seeking feasibility advice for doing this to his small house.
This house look as though it could be easily retrofitted with straw bale superinsulation. The question is whether it is also an economically sound choice relative to cost of retrofitting materials and labor versus savings on heating and cooling expenses over time. [Of course in a fire zone the cost of loosing the whole house and insurance rates would be an important factor.]
Important questions:
* How long does owner expect to use the building?
* How much energy savings are likely?
* How high are future energy costs likely to go?
* What is the state of attic insulation & cost of adding more?
* Is an alternative heating source in place or planned like woodstove or solar?
* What would retrofit do to resale values?
Costs involved in retrofit can include:
* Availability and price of bales and delivery costs.
* Would you do much work yourself, or use volunteer and paid labor?
* Does the perimeter foundation need repair, and expansion under the bales?
* Method selected to tie bales to existing walls.
* Revised door and window openings, [especially in fire zones].
* Exterior covering or coating.
* Extending the roof edges, other insulation and sofit costs.
There may be additional considerations. These can include the feelings of neighbors, the attitude of the local permitting and inspection authorities, and insurance coverage. As you study more about straw bale construction you will find your own questions.
This interesting article on California Wildfires:
What Will it Take to Prevent the Next Disaster was shown at the Public Policy site for Wharton (school of economics), Univ. of Pennsylvania. Discussion covered such issues as Insurance versus Public Utility responsibility for compensating victims. It has been noted
electrical company equipment has been a direct cause for some of these fires as in this article regarding possible protection of shareholders:
https://thinkprogress.org/californias-electric-utilities-under-investigation-again-for-starting-deadly-wildfires-78c487ab70e6/ Currently, lawsuits are involved. The Wharton article also discussed government responsibility and solutions in a number of areas.
GENERAL ADVICE FOR FUTURE YEARS
* Form local citizen groups to work on planning with police and fire authorities.
* Form localized groups to deal with specific issues, such as exit road, nearby forest brush and dead/diseased tree removal, and tree thinning, etc.
* Where exit roads are essential, clear brush well away from the road itself every year before fire season.
* In your own yard, trim back trees and bushes, remove all brush, and thin trees.
* Replace your flamable roof with metal to protect against flying embers.
