The fires next time: Hard lessons learned again

By: RICHARD W. HALSEY - Commentary | Saturday, October 27, 2007 7:14 PM PDT ∞

I met Carl in the front yard of his home while doing wildfire damage assessments in the Escondido neighborhood of Lomas Serenas. His house was still standing after the Witch Creek fire hit the community Monday morning, Oct. 22. Four of his neighbors were not as lucky. Their homes burned to the ground. I thought about where I was when the flames invaded here. My heart sank when I realized I was looking in this direction while standing on the roof of my own home less than a half mile away. I wished I had been able to help, but I was hectically trying to protect my own neighborhood with a few others who chose to stay and not evacuate. Although I certainly felt grateful that our home had survived, I felt guilty for not being able to do more for others.

Carl invited me in, I met his lovely wife, Shirley, and we all looked up at the basketball-sized hole in the living room ceiling. It had been caused by embers blown beneath the roof's concrete shingles, igniting the plywood below. Fortunately, firefighters were on scene and prevented the little spot blaze from consuming the entire structure.

We walked outside into the backyard and I immediately noticed how all the leaves on the trees had been frozen in time, all pointing toward the house. When heat from intense, wind-driven wildfire makes contact with trees without burning them, it "freezes" the leaves in the same direction the wind is blowing. As a testament to the firestorm's intensity, several 2-by-8-inch patio timbers attached to the house had been burned through completely.

"It's a miracle your home survived," I said to Carl and Shirley. They both just shook their heads in disbelief.

Fate up in the air

The source of the embers and blasting heat was a fire in a dense stand of chaparral that had ignited on the slope directly below their house. I had explored this unique, old-growth grove of mission manzanita and snapdragon bush several times in the past and worried about the homes above. While such a beautiful native habitat is an extremely valuable natural resource, homes should never have been built so close to it. Worse, three of the six homes destroyed on the Lomas Serenas ridgeline overlooking Interstate 15 were directly above small ravines, pathways that funneled flames and heat directly into the back of the structures. The fire risk such locations create for families is unacceptable. The developer who placed the homes in harm's way should have known better.

Fortunately, Carl and Shirley had done all the right things to protect their property from a potential wildfire. Between the ridge and their home was a 100-foot space filled with a small swimming pool and a green lawn. Their yard was immaculate: no stacks of firewood, piles of dead vegetation, or flammable junk. The design of their house was relatively fire-safe as well. Yet despite these precautions, their home almost burned down because of embers racing into the tiny gaps between the roof's concrete shingles. In retrospect, a rooftop sprinkler system would have been a prudent addition.

After investigating hundreds of homes impacted by wildfires over the past four years, it has become clear to me that how to reduce fire risk is not a one-answer question. It involves multiple variables and values that can only be properly addressed by examining the entire fire environment. While some have attempted to blame natural open space for what happened this week, such simplistic perspectives will do little to help us learn how to live safely in one of the most fire-prone environments on earth.

Listed in order of importance, I have found there are three critical factors in reducing community fire risk: location, building design, and appropriate defensible space.

Location

When you put flammable structures on top of a slope covered in dense vegetation, it's like putting a bowling pin in a bowling alley ---- ultimately it is going to be taken out. While new building codes are doing an excellent job in creating more fire-safe communities, there are still a large number of older structures designed to burn. In high fire-risk areas, these need to be immediately retrofitted to reduce their flammability.

Defensible space

Regarding appropriate defensible space, two of the six destroyed homes on the Lomas Serenas ridgeline burned because they were too close to the surrounding vegetation. But as Carl and Shirley's experience demonstrated, defensible space alone is not enough to protect structures from burning in a wildfire. Ironically, two homes next to each other in Lomas Serenas were ignited by embers that jumped over a dense patch of native vegetation as well as a broad expanse of bare dirt: The vegetation remained unburned. Fire will exploit the weakest link, so it is critical to address all the components of the fire-risk-reduction equation, not just the most obvious.

Neighborhood fire watch

There is a social aspect concerning fire protection as well. Every citizen needs to become fire literate. This means not only understanding the fire environment in which we live and ensuring our homes are capable of surviving a firestorm, but helping to establish a neighborhood "fire watch" program. Beyond making sure everyone is doing their share to create a fire-safe environment, a cadre of able-bodied, trained adults would not evacuate in order to assist fire suppression efforts. Although certainly not without controversy, this "go early or stay" approach has been successfully implemented in another highly fire-prone environment, Australia.

The basic facts supporting this strategy are simple. Early evacuations are often not possible and there will never be enough professional firefighters to protect every structure during a large, severe firestorm. Staying behind to defend a home from fire is serious business and must not be attempted by untrained individuals. However, within properly prepared environments such a strategy can be extremely helpful in preventing the loss of many homes because trained residents can extinguish small spot fires before they can become serious.

Firefighters did all they could to save as many homes as possible during the Witch Creek fire, but they were stretched thin by rapidly advancing fire fronts. This is why it is so important for all of us to help build a strong partnership with our local fire department and endeavor to understand the fire-prone environment in which we live. The lives of our families and the firefighters we expect to protect us depend on our focus, commitment and willingness to act on our collective wisdom.

Escondido resident Richard W. Halsey is the director of the California Chaparral Institute (www.californiachaparral.org), a science and educational organization devoted to promoting appreciation for and understanding of natural habitats native to arid Southern California. A former high school biology teacher, Halsey has also been trained as a Type 2 wildland firefighter.

First name only. Comments including last names, contact addresses, e-mail addresses or phone numbers will be deleted. Attempts to misrepresent your identity or impersonate any person will not be approved. All comments are screened before they appear online, so please keep them brief. Comments reflect the views of those commenting and not necessarily those of the North County Times or its staff writers. Click here to view additional comment policies.