One of the items in my discussion on the fires in LA, I posted that there are problems with building homes out of fireproof materials. Someone asked what that could be, and I would like to expand on that a bit. Let me begin by saying that I am not an engineer, so I will be giving you a firefighter’s perspective on this, meaning that my knowledge is broad but shallow on the topic.
Building homes to be entirely fireproof has long been a goal. Attempting this is how we wound up with things like Asbestos. One of the things that was tried in the wake of the Chicago fire in 1871 was to build homes with a fireproof roof. In the aftermath of that fire, a great many homes in the US were built with slate roofing tiles. It appeared as though the problem was solved. No more would fire brands land on your roof and burn down your house.
Until 1900, when a hurricane struck Galveston, Texas. The storm was estimated to be a Category 4 on the Saffir-Simpson scale. The winds of the storm, estimated to be over 140 miles per hour, ripped those slate tiles from the roofs of the homes, and many people were killed by these flying stone axes.
It’s difficult to find building materials that withstand all conditions, and when you do, those materials make building homes prohibitively expensive. Even were one to build homes like that, the radiant heat coming through the glass of the windows will ignite materials inside of the house.
It is still a cheaper and easier solution to manage forests, create a defensible space around your home, and take other preventative measures. The issue is that people who move to “the country” like having the woods and other plant materials growing right next to the house.
14 Comments
Dan D. · January 14, 2025 at 6:16 am
“It is still a cheaper and easier solution to… create a defensible space around your home”
This opposition to this simple statement illustrates the extent of lazy thinking so replete online. It also reminds me of the scientific insight involved in inverting a problem to solve it.
One of my favorite examples in engineering is the portable and inexpensive oxygen concentrator. Not too many genuinely smart engineers know that it doesn’t directly concentrate oxygen but instead removes nitrogen from a volume of “air” leaving mostly oxygen behind. The details revolve around $5 words like zeolite and adsorb but the foundational concept applies to the fire proofing issue.
Back to fire proofing though – shifting the responsibility from “those who build the house” to “you who own the house and maintain the land” is probably a non-starter since Part Two of the online genius-grade thinking is avoidance of personal responsibility.
Stefan v. · January 14, 2025 at 6:43 am
Steel sheet roof, steel frame, masonry walls, steel shutters. Cisterns, ponds, ditches, pumps, clever landscaping. And a steel gallows and a thicket of skull-spikes for the meddling bureaucrats spreading stupidity and tyranny.
Divemedic · January 14, 2025 at 9:12 am
That’s called lightweight truss and Q decking, and comes with its own fire dangers.
Stefan v. · January 14, 2025 at 3:15 pm
If the roof and gutters are galvanised steel, and the walls masonry, the attack points are very difficult. Weakpoints are whatever flammables are up against the house, like vegetation and vehicles. I’m an old Queenslander, and spent a lot of time in NSW and Victoria. The NSW fires dropped charred gum leaves on my patio from many tens of kilometers away, and in Melbourne during the massive Victorian fires I joked with my timberyard customers when they asked for availability of Victorian Ash….my reply was “we’re breathing it”. A colleague and good friend had a cabin out in Snowy River country….check out the film “The Man from Snowy River”. My mate was ruthless with clearing brush away from the homestead. Eucalyptus burns well, it even needs fire, but starved of regular burns builds a bomb. Nothing about the LA fires is a surprise or a mistake or incompetence, it is in-your-face criminal, and murder. The arsonists deserve to be thrown bodily into their creation, along with the many that stacked the fireplace and sabotaged the first responders. A cohesive community would not let them get away with it….hence the divide and rule policy. What will the next attack be….cyberwar, biological, or imported barbarian war bands? May The Lord have mercy upon us…
Wally · January 14, 2025 at 7:01 am
https://i.postimg.cc/nzdzsZm3/multi-hazard-rating.jpg
From “Comparative Study of Various Wall Systems’ Performance Attributes in Different Environmental Conditions”, Memari et al, International Journal of Architecture, Engineering and Construction Vol 4, No 2, June 2015
I built an ICF home as our forever home about 20 years ago and would never want to live in a stick/brick home ever again. Fire “proof” isn’t accurate of course but they are very fire resistant. Beyond the hazards listed they’re also more air, sound, rodent, hot/cold (R value), radiation, vehicle (ramming), and bullet resistant than other typical residential homes. Common enough that mortgage lenders won’t roll their eyes if you’re looking for a construction loan either, and insurance rates are usually lower which saves a few bucks over the years as will savings in heating/cooling costs. Once the siding is on they’re outwardly indistinguishable from other homes. Short of building and living in a bunker an outstanding survival(ist) option imo.
Divemedic · January 14, 2025 at 10:19 am
Concrete is good, and its the way that homes are built in the Caribbean. However, in conditions like we are seeing in LA, it may not be enough. Remember that the moisture content of concrete is high, and this can lead to spalling if the concrete is exposed to conditions like what is being seen now in LA.
Boys being boys, I once saw this myself. There is a training facility for firefighters in Orlando. It’s made of brick and concrete, designed to have fires burning inside of it. We were playing around during training, and we got the fire pretty hot. Hot enough to spall the concrete and damage the structure to the point where it couldn’t be used for a period of time while it was being repaired.
Bigus Macus · January 14, 2025 at 8:40 am
When Oakland CA had their fires back in the last century. The first thing my Uncle did with their house in Concord CA was ditch the old shaker shingle roof for a metal look alike. and he always made sure the surrounding brush was cut back around his house.
Pat H. Bowman · January 14, 2025 at 8:53 am
I agree with your overall assessment. Building a “fireproof” house would be expensive and largely impractical. Clearing brush and creating a firebreak is a lot easier and less expensive. However, I’m a belt and suspenders kind of guy, so we can do both. Sort of. Certainly land management is a huge key. Clear brush to make it harder for the trees around your yard to ignite. Keep trees away from your house.
Use fire resistant materials for construction. A metal roof would help minimize the risk from flying embers from your idiot neighbors who didn’t clear their brush. If it’s raining embers, a soaker hose along each side of the ridge line would be good. Using brick, stucco, Hardiboard or similar non-combustible siding would be a great idea. Don’t plant big bushes up near the house under the eves.
There are a lot of little things that can be done that don’t double the cost of the house and make it reasonably safe from fires. Not perfectly safe, but reasonably so. Sadly, most people would still rather have cheap shingle roofs and vinyl siding so they can have granite countertops and Jacuzzi tubs and three extra bedrooms they don’t need.
Elrod · January 14, 2025 at 9:54 am
A great many people focus on absolute survivability, ignoring relative survivability.
EX: Some years back my house went through 112 MPH hurricane winds “naked” – windows and doors not boarded up, garage door not braced, etc. I was expecting substantial damage, dawn showed that I had lost a lot of shingle tabs and some of the carpets were damp (throw water at a house at 112MPH and water will come in around the windows). FYI, Categorty 3 begins at 111 MPH
That told me that, first, the structure was solid and sound, and that with the proper protection – windows and doors boarded, garage door solidly braced, etc.- it would probably survive a full Cat 3 (Cat 3 is from 111 to 129 MPH) but that prudence would dictate being somewhere else just in case, because structural failure often becomes a “cascading event” in which the distance from “zero failure” to “complete, massive failure” can occur a lot faster than one thinks.
Which is why I always had bug-out equipment handy and a bug-out plan ready to go.
Fire not only wasn’t a severe threat, it wasn’t any greater than barely average; the greatest threat would be embers and radiated heat from both immediate neighbors should their house become fully involved, but I had confidence that the government-supplied fire response would be adequate under such circumstances, given the type of construction (reinforced masonry walls, fire-resistant fiberglas shingles and good house-to-landscaping clearance).
But I was well aware that there was a certain threshold, from various threats, above which my house would probably not survive. Which is why I had good insurance, multiple threat response plans, and a bug-out plan, because nothing is absolute. Flooding, in my case, was not a issue.
From what I’ve learned, absolute fire proofing is not possible; better than average resistance to fire damage is achievable, and that’s probably as good as it will ever get. That means design, construction materials and techniques, property owner maintenance, and intelligent government planning and response all become important, and are parts of a whole, and “three out of four” won’t cut it, it has to be all, or it winds up being nothing. Fire resitant roofing, good design, rapid FD response, but flammable landscaping right against the structure, and you’re precariously close to that “zero point” where the whole fails because of one or two if its components.
Mark · January 14, 2025 at 10:55 am
I know it’s not possible for most people, but an underground house would be the most “fire proof” that I can imagine.
Jonathan · January 14, 2025 at 11:30 pm
The problem with staying in any home during these types of fires, no matter the structure, is the heat and lack of oxygen in a firestorm.
DM can speak to it better than me, but the effects on the body, particularly the lungs will be pretty rough no matter the house – unless you have your own oxygen source, and even then you’ll likely have trouble.
TRX · January 14, 2025 at 11:08 am
> The issue is that people who move to “the country” like having the woods and other plant materials growing right next to the house.
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A clear tell of “city people” is a cabin with firewood stacked up against one wall, where it’s convenient to get to. Often right by the door, because why walk further than you have to?
Stacked firewood can contain termites, wood borers, carpenter bees, and carpenter ants. You don’t want any of those nestled up against a wood-framed structure. It’s also a nice habitat for spiders, mice, and snakes, none of which are very welcome in the yard.
Slow Joe Crow · January 14, 2025 at 2:41 pm
“Fireproof” is pie in the sky and as noted above is a way to evade responsibility. If you want to live in the woods you need a layered defense, which starts with creating and maintaining defensible space, reducing fire risks to your buildings by using things like metal roofing instead of cedar shingles, having a water source for spot fires, and finally having a go bag and evacuation routes planned.
The Bachelor Complex fires in Oregon forced evacuations from La Pine and Sunriver and caused a lot of damage but no deaths
Aesop · January 15, 2025 at 1:21 am
What Slow Joe said, and then some.
Fireproof houses are much like bulletproof vests: nonsensically unobtainable, unless you’re going to build a medieval castle of stone.
Fire-resistant however, is stupid easy.
A roof made of metal, or air-crete (air-infused cement) roofing tiles, both of which are far more fire-resistant that asphalt shingles, or wood shakes (which only burned up annually on houses until the late 1970s before they were finally banned for all new construction).
You should also have metal ember shields on your soffit vents that can be slid closed ahead of a fire, to prevent attics sucking in flaming embers.
3M and others also make fire-resistant window film that absorbs heat, and keeps window glass together rather than letting the blast furnace heat of brushfires blow the glass out, and ignite the houses.
None of those options are cost-prohibitive, and the insurance breaks are notable.
You can also install a fossil-fuel-powered water pump, hooked up to a few roof sprinklers or even water monitors, drawing from one’s swimming pool (which latter are in no short supply in the homes in question), thus not impinging on firefighting water supplies, and they can even be set to water down neighbors’ structures close enough to ignite your own.
All of that costs far less than rebuilding your entire home.
It also logically includes doing what fewer than 1% of the idiots in this fire did or ever do: landscaping for fire prevention and defensibility, and trimming back brush and trees.
When the FDs hereabouts see you haven’t done that, they literally and expressly write your house the f**k off, and let it burn, and even tell you this written policy upfront months to years in advance, because trying to save stupid peoples’ houses is a waste of their time and resources.
Other than not mandating and enforcing compliance with all of this, none of these failures are governments’ fault.
What government at all levels (50% of which has nothing to do with CA) owns is not cutting fire roads and fire breaks, not doing controlled burns, not filling reservoirs, not deploying and bringing in resources in advance, not requiring minimum-width road access for development, not repairing tens of thousands of broken water mains since the ’94 Northridge earthquake, cutting fire budgets, not building additional water storage capacity anywhere in the state for the last 50 years, and letting meth-head homeless people squat perennially in wildland brush-filled canyons adjoining multi-million-dollar homes, that is in a red flag fire hazard zone most of the year, every year.
And worst of all, letting stupid people build stupid neighborhoods full of such slam-dunk firestorms in stupid places that should have been turned into permanent greenspace.
Doing that would make property damage, let alone most loss of life, from wildfires rare to non-existent.
The brush, OTOH, grows back in one wet year.
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