Recent Los Angeles’ fire, with the 2023 Colombian climate school Origin economic I will report Sprinkle easing strategy We provide valuable insights necessary to reduce fire risks and how they do.
According to the report, wildfires are constantly occurring and play an important role in forest health. The fire burns dead vegetation, releases organic nutrients, stimulates some seed growth, and kills pests. However, today, because a lot of people settle near the land in the forest area, the US Forest Bureau deals with fire risks rather than the management of fire and the reduction of flammable materials. It is the main method.
We talked to the climate and social program reports and the MA director, LiSa Dalee, and the difficulties of implementing them. Her research focuses on the mountain fire risk zone in the western United States.
Did LA prepare for these fire?
no. La Fires began as a wildfire, and soon became a fire in the city and a building. Many wildfire situations are not the most common causes of family losses and damage. It is from the remaining fire from your neighbor’s house. These remaining fires become fuel, and the house goes immediately from the victims of fire to the focus of fire. In this new era, the number of people living in the Wildland Urban Interface has increased, especially due to the increase in fires due to climate change, so that wildfire becomes a fire and urban fire very quickly. Was created. When reconsidering how to manage these types of dangers, you need to use expertise from both urban disaster management and forest disaster management.
What is the most effective fire preparation strategy?
All research shows that hardening of the house is the best fire preparation strategy. Hard curing is the management of architectural materials, planning the landscape around the house, the appropriate situation of the wooden mountains, the choice of the right siding of the house, and how close they are at the house. It means working at the facility to do it. California is a national leader of the forced Building Standards Law, and California’s Building Standards, Chapter 7a, is the most robust example of US building standards. This has established the minimum construction construction standard in areas with risk of wildfires, such as requiring fire -resistant materials and fire -resistant materials. Construction and vegetation management.
So were they ready for your question? In some respects, they are the most prepared because they have the most aggressive building standards in the state for new construction. The problem is that 80-90 % of the properties are exempted from their building standards, as the laws passed in 2008 are applied only to new construction. The remodeling structure that existed before 2008 is not included. It is impossible to imagine to strengthen all structures in California, including retro fits.
But housing owners should strengthen their homes and reduce their risk, right?
Yes, but some of the questions here are that there are 10 neighbors around me. When I harden all the houses in this house at a great cost, experts come to give technical advice, move the wooden mountains, make the house a roof, and change the material. But if you are not working in any of the other ten neighbors, the effectiveness of my efforts will be reduced. Therefore, the hardening of the house is a really collective problem. To get the best results, it is necessary to enlarge some of these policies to the entire community. Even the essential building standards do not guide us there, so we need to think about better incentives for curing the house.
Some tissues (Firewisee)https://www.nfpa.org/education- And-research/wildfire/firewise-usa) I am trying to harden the community scale. The town can decide to be a Firewise community. That means they cured the house. They think about roads, escape routes, utility corridors, and relationships with public land, and then they have fireworks signs at the entrance of their town. With this specification, you may be incentive because you are qualified for a specific subsidy.
Is there any other place with building standards to reduce fire risks besides California?
There is an example of almost completely volatile local government level building standards. They are much smaller, usually applied only to the mapped risk zone house. These risk maps are based on history data, but we know that history data is no longer an accurate forecast for the future due to climate change. The transition to future modeling is beginning to be seen. This may be more useful, but my first idea is that modeling is especially in the western United States, which is at least one -third of 11 western lands. It indicates that there is a risk of burning. In other words, these states have a large number of forest areas that have the risk of wildfire.
What can the federal government do to reduce the risk of land?
If you live in a western state near the forest area, it may be a parcel of public land managed by the federal government. For example, 52 % of California land bases are public land managed by the federal government. In other words, only the federal government has the authority to correct its property. The federal government can provide fuel reduction treatment, such as fuel reduction or mechanical treatment, to reduce fuel load. Individual owners and neighbors are not possible.
The problem is that there is such a rapid increase in a house sitting toward a public land, and there is not much room for the specified fire. The prescribed fire works very well in the backcountry that can reduce the density of the forest and reduce the combustible material, but it often does nothing to reduce the risk of houses on the border of public land. yeah.
In addition, there is almost no general support for the specified fire for the actual risk and the perceived risk. In reality, less than 1 % of the prescribed fires have escaped so far, but when they do it, it is a headline news, so that private housing owners do not want it in their neighborhood.
Other barriers that have expanded the use of prescribed fire are the same as the weather conditions that promote these fires in the first place. If it is too hot, the wind is too strong, or too dry, you will not be able to get the permission to start a prescribed fire. When the climate changes, most days are hot, dry, windy, and the possibility of escape is much higher, so one is disqualified.
How does the insurance company deal with all this fire risk?
Most California’s insurance contracts cover the fire, and most of these insurance are not distinguished from cities’ fire and wildfires. Many states have standard firefighting contracts that are required, which means that insurance contracts need to cover fire, including mountain fire. This often has an insurance company in an actual exposure and vulnerability. [when they must pay out for damages or loss]。
As a result, the insurance company has deleted the insurance policyholder. They have withdrawn in the western part, have raised their insurance premiums, and have found that more and more households in these very high -risk areas cannot take out insurance. As a result, these households are like the California Fair Plan, that is, the insurance of the 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 was not intended to protect the whole state. It was to protect housing owners who did not have their own negligence, multiple disasters affected their homes and could not insurance, but purchased real estate and needed insurance to get a mortgage. Was intended. State insurance companies can say “no” to guarantee someone, but in the state, they must support a fair plan and contribute to the funds to undertake.
Another problem is that the state is artificially reducing insurance prices. California did this. They had a law that illegally to withdraw your insurance for one year after the fire. They do it for a good reason. They do not want homeless people to delete insurance contracts. However, this means that insurance companies will not be able to use risk -reflection prices. They need to use the price set by the government. Insurance companies have no clear risk, not the actual risk determined by the insurance company, but the price reflects politics. If you allow insurance risk reflective prices, the price of many low -income households and middle -income households is excluded from insurance, and only billionaire can take out insurance. The government has been trying to prevent this, but I think it will worsen the situation in the long term because it masks the risk by imposing a lower price.
Can municipalities do something to reduce fire risk?
Zoning occurs at local governments or urban levels. However, the United States does not know an example of a compulsory zoning policy. There are several examples of them and are downs and downs. For example, when I lived in Colorado, I worked on aggressive zoning proposals at the local government level, but the real estate agents opposed it. Outside. Local bonds drop crash. The ability to raise funds by local governments is obtained from property tax, and if half of the assets declare half of high risk, there is a fixed asset tax tank. These financial costs are the real expenses that immediately attacked housing owners and towns.
What can you learn from La Fires?
From the viewpoint of hazards, it is difficult to understand the strategy that has been dependent for a long time because it is out of the chart. You need to know what is working and where and what is. I am really interested in seeing what we learned from California’s fire. How many of the houses that performed the hardened work survived? How about comparing it with the house that wasn’t? Living with the fire has long been a mantra in the western United States, but it was not as life and death as it is now. We are facing some basic reconstruction needs for where people can build and how they are doing it.
