Given the recent Los Angeles fire, the Columbia Climate School reported in 2023 Colombian climate school reports provided valuable insights to reduce the risk of fire and its possible measures.
According to the report, wildfire always happens naturally and plays an important role in forest health. The fire was burned to destroy the vegetation, released the nutrition in organic matter, stimulated the growth of certain seeds and killed the pests. However, today, since many people settle near the forest land, suppressing the fire (rather than the prescribed burns or reducing fire management of flammable substances), this has become the main way to deal with fire risks in the United States Forest Service.
We talked the best strategy to reduce the risk of fire and implement difficulties with the MA climate of the report and the Director of the Social Planning of the report. Her research focuses on the wildfire risk areas throughout the west of the United States.
Are Los Angeles prepared for these fires?
no. The Los Angeles fire started at wild fire, and soon became a fire and a strong fire. In the case of many wildfires, the source of the most common family losses and damage is not wild fire. This is due to the ember of the burning neighbor’s house. These embers became fuel, and the house quickly became the victim of the fire to the instigator of the fire. In this new era, the number of people living in the Wildland Urban interface increased. In addition to climate change, the increase in fire risks caused by climate change, which quickly made wildfires become a structural fire and urban fire. When we re -consider how to manage the dangers of these types, we will need to use the professional knowledge of urban disaster management and forest disaster management.
What is the most effective fire prevention strategy?
All studies tell us that family sclerosis is the best preparation of fire strategies. Family hardening means to work on the property so that it is flammable, including managing building materials, planning the landscape around the house, placing wooden stakes appropriately, choosing the correct wall board for your house, and determining the distance between the houses. Essence California is the national leader of mandatory construction regulations. Chapter 7A, California’s Construction Regulations, is the most powerful example of American architectural regulations-it has established the lowest standards for building buildings in areas with risk of wildfire, including refractory materials and construction and construction and construction Vegetation management.
So, are their problems ready? In some ways, they are the most prepared because they are the most aggressive architectural code in the state for new buildings. The problem is that 80 % to 90 % of properties are exempted from the construction regulations because the law passed in 2008 is only applicable to new buildings. It does not include the structure that exists before 2008. The size of each structure that is trying to harden in California (including transformation) is unimaginable.
But homeowners should strengthen their houses to reduce risks, right?
Yes, but a part of the question here is, assuming that there are 10 neighbors around me. If I put all the houses into practice, to pay a huge fee-I asked the experts to give me technical suggestions, I move the stakes, re-roof, my house, I change the material The other 10 neighbors did not do any job, so the effectiveness of my efforts will be reduced. Therefore, family sclerosis is indeed a collective action. We need to start seeing that the scale of some of these policies expands to the community to obtain the best results. We need to consider better family hardening incentives, because even mandatory building code has not allowed us to reach there.
Some organizations and other organizations (are trying to perform community scale hardening. A town can decide to be a whip community, which means that they have been done. They have considered roads and evasion routes, public business corridors, and the relationship between public land, etc. Wait, and then they can burn fireworks at their town entrance, which makes them qualified to get certain gifts, so this may be an incentive measure.
In addition to California, are there construction regulations elsewhere to reduce the risk of fire?
There are also other municipal -level construction regulations almost completely voluntary examples. They are small and are usually only suitable for houses in risk areas. These risk charts are based on historical data, but we know that historical data is no longer accurate forecasting indicators due to climate change. We began to see the transformation to the future modeling. This may be proven to be more useful, but my first idea is that the model will indicate that everyone has the risk of burning, especially in the west of the United States, where at least one -third of the land is the public land in the 11 states in the West. Essence Therefore, this means that these states have a large number of forest land facing wild fire risks.
What measures can the federal government take to reduce the risk of fire on the land?
If you live in Western countries near the forest area, it is the public land managed by the federal government. For example, 52 % of the land bases in California are public land managed by the federal government, which means that only the federal government has the right to modify the property. The federal government can come in and reduce fuel treatment, that is, specified burns or mechanical treatment to reduce fuel load. Private owners and communities cannot.
The problem is that now we have so many houses sitting on public land, and there is no room for opening the fire space. The specified fire can reduce the density of the forest and reduce flammable substances in the post -country, but this does not take any measures to reduce the risk of houses. These risks are usually located at the border of public land.
In addition, due to the risks of real and perceptible, the public has little support for the prescription fire. In fact, less than 1 % of the prescription fire escaped, but when they do this, this is headline news, which will cause private homeowners to not want anywhere they are near them.
The expansion of other obstacles to the use of fires is to first drive these fire weather conditions. When it is too hot, when the wind or too dry, you cannot get a license to start a fire. With the changes in climate, most of the days are hot, dry and strong, and any of them is eligible, because the chance of escape is much higher.
How do insurance companies deal with all these fire risks?
Most of the insurance policies in California covered the fire, and most of the insurance policies did not distinguish the city’s fire and wild fire. Many states have a prescribed standard fire policy, which means that the insurance policy must cover the fire including wildfires. This usually makes the insurance company in a real exposure and fragile state [when they must pay out for damages or loss]Essence
As a result, the insurance company is abandoning the policy holder. They have evacuated throughout the West, premiums are rising. In these high -risk areas, more and more families have discovered that they cannot obtain insurance. As a result, these families will eventually follow things like the fair plan of California-final insurance. [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 has never intended to protect the entire country. It aims to protect the housing owner. They do not have their own faults, causing a variety of disasters to affect their houses, but they are not insurance, but they want to buy real estate and need insurance to get mortgage. The state’s insurance company can say “no” insurance, but because in the state, they must contribute to funds that support and underwrite fair plans.
Another problem is that states are artificially reducing insurance prices. California did this. They have a law that makes insurance companies abandon your policy one year after the fire. They do this for a lot of reason-they don’t want those who have just been returned to home to give up the insurance policy. But this means that insurance companies can no longer use risk reflex pricing; they must use the government’s price. Then, the strategic holder does not have a clear risk signal because its price reflects politics, not the actual risk determined by the insurance company. If we allow risk reflex pricing in insurance, many low -income families and middle -income families will be priced as insurance, and only one millionaires can bear insurance. The government is constantly involved in preventing this situation, but in the long run, the situation makes the situation worse, because they cover up risks by imposing a lower price.
Can the municipal authorities take any measures to reduce the risk of fire?
Partition occurs at levels in municipal or cities. But I don’t know that there are compulsory wildfire regional policies in any example of the United States. There are several examples that they are proposed and shot down. For example, when I live in Colorado, I filed a proposal for the active partition of the municipal level, but the real estate agent opposed it because once you use a certain thing as a risk area, the property value in the area is all out of the bottom. Municipal bonds collapsed. The ability of municipal authorities to raise funds comes from property taxes. If we announce half of their high risk of property, that is, the property tax tank. These economic costs are the actual costs of real homeowners and towns.
What can we learn from Los Angeles fire?
What we see from the danger is so far, so it is difficult to understand the strategies we relied for so long. We need to better know what is working and where. I will be very interested in seeing what we have learned from the California fire. How many houses that do hard work have survived? What is the comparable to the house? For a long time, life in the west of the United States has been a spell, but now he has never been as life and death as it is now. We face a foundation for re -thinking about how we allow people to build and how to build.
