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Notes -
So - looking at The Palisades Fire - everything that is made of concrete/brick or stone is standing, everything else is gone. Is there any amount of fire damage that will convince the US residential construction companies to finish reading The Three Little Piggies book, when they have obviously stopped at the house of the second piggy?
Platform framing is great because it doesn't require specialized equipment. You might want an auto crane for roof trusses, but that's like half a day of work per house. Otherwise it's just power tools and Mexicans.
There are a few options for earthquake-resistant concrete housing.
All three are quite feasible if California straight up bans combustible single-family homes, then construction companies will invest into new construction methods. Otherwise it makes more sense to reuse the technology used in the rest of the lower 48 states.
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AFAIK it's much easier to build seismically sound structures out of wood than brick or concrete.
Also while the walls of stone buildings may still be standing, considering the absolute devastation of the insides, it may have been better for them to burn to save on demolition costs.
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I'd say "look, there's clearly only one wolf whose lung capacity is presumably limited. It's probably cheaper in the long run to keep building houses out of sticks, especially in non-wolf-threatened areas. Also shooting the wolf would be cheaper than building every pig a wolf-proof house"
There's almost certainly a few areas in the US where building much heavier/different structures makes economic sense due to fires, floods, or hurricanes, but it's so expensive that building cheaper elsewhere probably makes more sense unless you already have far more money than sense. (Especially in flood zones)
I hate to sound like an urbanist, but I'm looking at The Summit housing development near the fire, and if people want to build in the forested hills and grasslands outside of LA and SF, they can probably bear the cost of occasionally rebuilding their $6M mansions. Them choosing to build in such a risky location shouldn't affect the viability of those (horrible but cost-effective) 4-over-1 apartment complexes in denser areas.
Personally I'm well aware my tinder shitbox inna woods would be a lost cause if there was ever a wildfire here, and budget for it accordingly. But it hasn't happened yet, and I could build 3 or 4 of these places before the breakeven point. It's the price I pay for not having to walk on nothing but concrete, which I'm convinced sucks the soul from my body.
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How much different is the cost of an insurance claim for a stone shell whose insides burned vs building a new stick framed home from scratch.
It doesn't really work that way, again unless the house is literally surrounded by/within a bunch of big trees. Houses usually burn in wildfire due to brands/embers falling on flammable bits that are exposed, or grassfires burning right up to flammable siding and catching that on fire.
It's normal for towns to have trees and greenery on the streets, which conveniently double as tinder.
There's usually lawns and such in between that and the houses though. (or should be, if you have a town somewhere that can also get wildfires.
The safe zone for human survivability if overrun is much smaller than you might think, for reasonable fuel loads -- nevermind the inside of a building.
The burned out neighbourhoods you see in wildfire footage almost always got that way by the houses themselves catching fire one at a time -- in the Kelowna fires aftermath you'd often see the odd house where the builder decided to spring for a tile roof untouched right in the middle of a burnt out street.
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Even just wood-frame with the exposed bits clad in non-combustibles gets you most of the way there, provided your house is not literally in the middle of untouched forest. (which is a difficult position, in the worst-case scenario, and really needs firebreaks)
Steel/clay/concrete roof is priority #1, and stucco (or similar) siding helps some too -- we struggle to implement these in Canada for labour cost/expertise and style reasons, but I don't really see how either of these are an obstacle in California? (Earthquake-proof concrete OTOH gets pretty expensive I think?)
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