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I'm quoted in a new article in the Chico News and Review: "We’d be way ahead of the game if we’d have made a plan to redesign a post-fire Paradise 20 years ago—we knew it would eventually burn, just as we know Marin, Cohasset and Placerville will now.” https://chico.newsreview.com/2020/11/12/california-will-burn/
Without a postfire roadmap, Paradise is plowing ahead, rebuilding a city of wooden houses with the same layout that roasted 2 years ago. Right after the fire there could have been opportunities to consolidate lots, realign streets, and design a more fire resilient city. 1/
Embers started thousands of fires. These ignited some houses. Adjacent homes caught from the radiant heat. Paradise burned in a cascade of house fires. The next bad fire in Paradise will also be spread by embers. Structures are fuel. #urbandesign matters. 2/
The new WUI building codes are a good start, but the best-built house will burn to the ground if the neighbors place is 30 feet away and on fire, and there are no fire trucks available. 3/
Once land is platted and subdivided, and the lots are sold, changing the urban footprint is nearly impossible. All the more reason to get fire behavior experts more involved in the development and approval of new subdivision maps. Let's not make the problem worse. #angorafire 4/
The Angora Fire, in South Lake Tahoe, burned straight down a street which was in perfect alignment with the prevailing fire season winds. The streets acted as urban canyons, funneling the winds. Fires burned from house to house. Vegetation management wouldn't have helped. 5/
The wildland urban interface is not just a forest with some houses in it. It is a fundamentally different fire environment. Prescribed fire and forest thinning may not buy us much advantage in densely-built urban landscapes, where the structures are the primary fuel. #planning 6/
