UC ANR fire expert highlights materials, components and actions that saved homes from LA fires – Green Blog

Valachovic, UC Cooperative Extension advisor, visited neighborhoods affected by Palisades and Eaton Fires

This essay was written by Yana Valachovic, a member of UC ANR’s Fire Network with a specialty in community resilience and the built environment. She is the county director and forest advisor for the University of California Cooperative Extension in Humboldt and Del Norte counties.

Many houses still stand among the blocks of fire-ravaged neighborhoods of both the Palisades and Eaton Fire footprints, each offering clues about what they and community members experienced during Jan. 7-8, 2025.

A squirt gun, a blender jar used to scoop water from a pool, cut fence panels on the ground, gates off their hinges, rub marks from fire hoses on cement, and a shovel in the yard. Each is a sign that someone, who may have been a resident or firefighter, was trying their best to protect a home or stop a fire from advancing through the bushes, leaves and mulch surrounding each home.

I am trained to look for these signs and see places where building materials and home elements were tested by fire resulting from ember ignitions or the radiant heat from the combustion of nearby structures. I took two trips to the Eaton and Palisades Fires in the weeks following the fires to look for examples where surviving homes withstood the ferocity of the fire and for signs of defensible space and home hardening in action.

On March 11, at 10 a.m., I will share some of my observations and explore critical fire mitigation strategies pertinent throughout California and other wildfire-prone areas. To register for this webinar, use this link.

Clues in the ashes, signs of hope and community resiliency

During my visits to LA, I found evidence that homes and yards can be designed, maintained and retrofitted to resist heat, embers and flames. Among the ashes, there are signs of hope and actions that we can take to help our homes resist future wildfires.

First of all, what surrounds our structures (e.g., house, garage and storage sheds) – working from the edge of the wall, under our decks, and out five feet – really matters. Fire has a hard time reaching our houses if there are no stored combustible materials, mulch, woody plants or attached wood gates. In defensible space lingo, we call this “zone zero,” and it is the most important area to create and maintain.

The windows were the weak link in both the Eaton and Palisades Fires, where the people generally built using stucco or stucco-like cladding products, which are generally less vulnerable to fire. With radiant heat from adjacent burning buildings or landscaping, the heat broke windowpanes or deformed the glazing on the vinyl windows, allowing the glass panes to fall out. Once there is an opening in the building, fire can enter the home.

When a house, garage or storage shed burns within 25 feet of another, the heat from that building can ignite siding and break glass in a window. We call that “radiant heat.” In LA, where I saw dual-paned, tempered glass windows and noncombustible siding, homes survived.

Dual-paned windows perform far better with radiant heat exposure than single-pane windows, common in buildings built before the 1970s (and the case for most homes in these fire footprints). I saw many homes that survived – despite experiencing heat exposure from a nearby building – because the single-paned windows had been replaced and upgraded to dual-pane glass. Tempered glass would be the best material choice where buildings are close to each other.

Plants, wood fences and bender boards that define planting areas create beauty, but fire can follow these items to the structure. When incorporating these elements into our yards, make sure these elements are not linked so the fire can follow them like a wick to our structures. Replace wood gates that attach to the house with metal. Place plants into groups or islands separated from the house and each other.

Every building can be a vector or a future radiant heat source. It is important to take care of all buildings, even if they have little financial value. For example, an ignited garden shed near the house can become a heat source to the home.

Action must be taken, and it is everyone’s responsibility

In both the Eaton and Palisades Fires, I did not see many homes that survived without evidence of some type of defensive action. I have been wrestling with what message that sends. In the end, I concluded that the message is that in the surviving homes, small actions in preparation – combined with a little extra help from a fire professional – were the key to preventing and limiting damage.

In fires like these, where the wind is carrying embers everywhere, and fire personnel are focused on helping everyone evacuate, every little action the homeowner has taken to prepare for fire increases the chance that a firefighter will make a split-second decision and be able to take the time to help defend a building. Or, they may conclude that the building needs no assistance because it is well-prepared.

I have visited the sites of other catastrophic fires, such as the 2017 Tubbs Fire in Santa Rosa, 2018 Camp Fire in Paradise, and 2021 Marshall Fire in Colorado. So, where have I landed after investigating another scene of devastation?

Fire adaptation takes adaptation. We must do some things differently. This is not an action for others to take; it is an action for everyone. We have learned to use seat belts and car seats and sneeze into our elbows rather than our hands.

We can change behaviors to protect those we most care about and our homes. Is it possible to build or retrofit homes to resist hurricane-force winds carrying hot embers? My answer is yes. I can’t predict that every home will survive, but many more will. And these collective actions are well worth the investment.

Yana Valachovic is the county director and forest advisor for the University of California Cooperative Extension in Humboldt and Del Norte counties and a member of UC ANR’s Fire Network with a specialty in community resilience and the built environment. Valachovic is passionate about finding solutions to challenging problems bringing her skills in forestry, natural resources and sociological research, design and mitigation of the built environment for wildfire resilience, as well as her years rooted in county government and community engagement.

She is a member of the Governor’s Wildfire Forest Resilience Task Force and other state fire policy workgroups, and also the co-lead of the Northern California region of the California Fire Science Consortium. Valachovic has co-authored papers on fire behavior in California forests and the intersection of fire performance in home and landscape design. She is active in California policy development and has been a technical resource for bioenergy, forest management, home hardening and improvements to defensible space legislation.

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