Occasional TV photos show that all the houses on a street or in a close neighborhood burned down, yet one in the middle did not?
Well, generator, roof-top sprinkler system?
Construction materials?
Luck?
Other?
Occasional TV photos show that all the houses on a street or in a close neighborhood burned down, yet one in the middle did not?
Well, generator, roof-top sprinkler system?
Construction materials?
Luck?
Other?
Construct the intersecting gable on the main roof for a faster, easier-to-build assembly.
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Replies
Part is luck.
WQe were out in Yellowstone park a few years after the big fire there. We were told that the flames were headed right at the main lodge, a huge log building. Just before the lodge would have gone up, the fire jumped over the building, and continued on.
The park rangers really didn't have any explanation why.
One of the worst kept secrets to protecting a home in one of these Southern California fires is to stay there with your pitiful garden hose, stand on your roof in plain sight and wait for the fire fighters to help you.
The fire department's first mandate is to protect human life so they put the available resources to work on the house where the HO refuses to leave and tries to save his home by himself.
Other times it's grace or luck, however you look at it.
Many of the newer homes built in previously uninhabited areas, surrounded by native scrub brush, are designed to withstand moderate amounts of heat and flames without igniting. But they aren't safe from firestorms driven by Santa Ana winds in very low humidity. That's what has happened many times, enough that it seems that lessons would have been learned and applied.
Still, the best way to avoid most of the perils of Southern California living is to buy a home in the older flat land neighborhoods. Raised foundations on solid soil, not a sandy old lake bed, withstand earthquakes well. The flat ground, away from hillsides covered with dry native vegetation, is almost always safe from fires.
Most of the homes now have cement/clay roofs, also the have stucco walls that do not burn
What most of the homes are missing is "Window Shutters".
When the hill is ablaze next to a home, the radiation from the fire will ignite curtains and window coverings INSIDE the house.
Want to star a new construction business in California, sell fireprooofing retro fitting. Install stucco, cement roofs, fireproof eaves, cut back vegetation, anti radiation block walls, cement shutters and roof sprinklers. All the useless Earthquake retro-fitters can now have a more useful job.
I have been wondering about that.I keep seeing pictures of houses burning and I see tiles on the roof and stuccco sides so that NOTHING on the exterior is aflame, while the interior burns out from under it all. It didn't make sense until I read your comment here now.
Welcome to the Taunton University of Knowledge FHB Campus at Breaktime. where ... Excellence is its own reward!
I was listening to a report on NPR earlier this week. Apparently after the last fire in the area, people were instructed as to how to landscape their properties to lessen fire spread. Certain plants are highly flammable and some aren't. At any rate, only one guy on the street being discussed followed the directions and removed the bad stuff. His was the only house on the street this time that wasn't destroyed. Obviously, in some conditions, a dwelling is going to be doomed no matter what, but sometimes simple precautions can save a house.
Some SoCal HOs have a high pressure pump, like the Honda linked below. They set it up near their swimming pool when there's a fire. If they've done a good job of brush clearance around their property, a pump like this one will very likely be enough to stop anything else that threatens their home.
If the long link doesn't work, try:http://www.honda.com
http://estore.honda.com/pe/asp/landing_nodealer.asp?RefID=PE&RefModelId=WH20XK1AC1&ProductSeriesId=P4WP_HIPRS&ProductCatId=P2WP
I've always thought if I was in a high risk fire area, it would be a concrete house, and metal/tile roof. Either use the pool idea with a sprinkler system on the top of the roof, or a cistern devoted to just this purpose. No plants within range of the house, and firesafe plants only.Common sense sorta stuff. For the most part, you just gotta protect it for 30 minutes or so until the worst passes by.
Nater,
OH-OH, wrong approach! Plant a lot of plants.. just make them Ice plants.. they are succulents which when they burn release steam which is a good fire dampening agent..
I'm not sure that's the right pump. Seems to me you don't want to empty the pool in half an hour, but want to be able to sustain an effort for several hours, so you can abandon the site and leave it running. In addition to the landscaping ideas and fire shutters, seems like a misting setup would be essentially what you'd need -- enough to keep everything damp with minimal water consumption.
If your view never changes you're following the wrong leader
Southern California home owners who live in fire prone areas are advised to clear brush from around their home to a safe distance, as preliminary protection.
When a fire is in the area they usually place sprinklers on the roof using water from the usual source to keep the roof soaked.
When an intense wind driven fire moves through the kind of property described, the last type of protection recommended is a high volume, high pressure pump feed by the swimming pool. That allows the HO to take a postion and hit flare ups accurately with a lot of water, from a distance.
The fire danger only lasts for a short time, an hour at most, because of the nature of the fuel. So taking seven thousand gallons out of a twenty thousand gallon pool would make sense. That's the amount that the linked pump would use, running full tilt for an hour.
That only works if you aren't forced to evacuate.
If your view never changes you're following the wrong leader
Can they force you to leave? The hurricane squad can't make you leave, they just ask who is your next-of-kin.
Depends on state law and how nasty they want to get. I think in most cases you can be arrested if you refuse a lawful order to evacuate. Of course, they might not want to bother with that, but then again they may decide to make an example of you, or at least slap you with a hefty fine.
If your view never changes you're following the wrong leader
And so, if you evacuate, a different type of pump would do what?
Rather than fighting the fire with a hose you'd rely on some sort of sprinkler system. Considerably lower volume than one of those big pumps.
If your view never changes you're following the wrong leader
Sprinkler systems only provide protection when the fire is more moderate than what often happens with brush fires in very low humidity, high wind conditions here in SoCal. That's why several methods of protection are advised by fire officials.
The last of these is high pressure, high volume portable pumps, the same type employed by fire fighters when they use a swimming pool and a couple lengths of hose to stop a fast moving brush fire from igniting a home.
WoodShopGuy,
Ice plants.. they are a dense succulent that has a lot of water retention and when they burn release a lot of steam which helps dampen fires..
Add stucco and clay roof tiles plus good recessed windows without curtains or the curtains pulled back behind the wall and you have a defendable home..