Skelton: California residents should prepare for fires as they do earthquakes

California should put in the same effort preparing buildings to survive wildfires that it modified for earthquakes.

This is the view of UCLA Mercedian fire scientist Crystal Colden, a former firefighter with the U.S. Forest Service.

It makes sense.

California needs “policies that support individuals and communities to make structures more fireproof – replacing roofing and other outdoor building materials with flame-retardant ones,” says Colden in Q&A with the California Public Policy Institute.

“It will be expensive, but how many trillions have California invested in earthquake retrofit? We need to look at forest fires in the same way with a massive investment to make societies more fire-resistant,” she says.

It might be “trillions” on hand. Perhaps hundreds of billions. whatever. We have spent a lot on preparing ourselves for catastrophic earthquakes.

California wildfires and earthquakes are inevitable. We made a good stab at preparing for earthquakes but only recently started waking up from a wildfire.

Heavy rains are also inevitable that can cause devastating floods, particularly in Northern California. We have spent many billions building dams and dikes to prevent raging flood waters. The state has nearly 1,500 dams, many of which operate in part to control floods.

“We have so many dams and a crazy network of canals and canals,” Colden told me when I called her.

We also spend an enormous amount of money preparing for the tsunami. How many tsunamis were there on the west coast? But we’ve made a big investment in it. There are tsunami warning and evacuation signs along the coast.

“We haven’t made that kind of state or federal investment in tackling wildfires.”

Fire fighting, yes. But retrofitting residential homes and commercial buildings for fire resistance is not enough.

Colden grew up in Seattle and graduated from Cornell University with a history degree.

She says, “I had no intention of going into law school or becoming a history teacher in high school, so I went to work for [the Forest Service] Because she was working outside. “

Colden worked on a lumber crew near Placerville, east of Sacramento. In the fall, she was prescribed burning to clean the woodland floors – something the Feds and the state were doing less.

She says, “I got stuck on fire.” “So I became a firefighter in the wilderness. After two years, I switched to fire ecology. I wanted to better understand why we dealt with fires the way we did and started college.”

She became a professor of fire science at the University of California, Merced in July after being an Associate Professor at the University of Idaho.

The one thing that bothers Colden is the common cry of many citizens that local governments should not allow people who have burned out of their homes to rebuild in rural areas devastated by bushfires – they should not even allow them to build homes there in the first place.

“I feel frustrated when I hear people say we shouldn’t live in the outback,” she says, “because they fail to acknowledge that there are flammable plants nearly everywhere in California – 98% of the state’s vegetation is exposed to fires under the right conditions.”

“We just saw coastal redwoods burning [near Santa Cruz]. The people who lived there did not think they had to worry about forest fires because redwoods are damp and not usually burn. What we see in terms of climate change is that these places that don’t burn much are being burned frequently. “

“So when people ask me, Where is a safe place to live in California where I don’t have to worry about the fire?” The only place that fits this description is in the middle of the urban center of cities – Downtown Los Angeles, Downtown San Francisco. If you live in an urban forest, as some call it, you don’t need to worry about wildfires. “

But you might worry about your wallet. People are moving to the countryside because they cannot afford housing in a city that has become ridiculous.

“We didn’t tell people,“ You can’t live on these earthquake faults. ”Nobody suggested that the Bay Bridge should not be rebuilt because it was not a safe place for the bridge,” says Colden. “It has become much safer, so when the next earthquake strikes, it is less likely to collapse.

“This is the conversation we need to have about wildfires.”

It cost $ 6.3 billion to construct a new eastern extension of the San Francisco-Oakland Bay Bridge after it was destroyed by the 1989 Loma Prieta earthquake.

“Let us suggest that we not allow people to live in it [fire-prone] “The areas are largely straw and they don’t address the problem,” says Colden. It addresses an untenable solution.

“The real solution is to know how to live in these places that are prone to fires in order not to be exposed to disasters. What we need are stronger building codes. This is an analogy to earthquakes.”

A uniform building code covers all of California that aims to ensure that structures can withstand earthquakes. Retrofitting may also be required. This is true whether the area has flaws or not.

But strict code requirements to protect against wildfires are sporadic. They are only imposed in places considered to be fire-prone by the country. And the state doesn’t always get it right. One example: some wine country around Santa Rosa two years ago.

Wildfires must be treated with the same respect and fear as earthquakes that pose an ancient threat in California.

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