VIDEO: Some of California’s most destructive wildfires have changed the way homeowners think about their own space. Marin County residents Anita Brock and her husband Steve Kaplan are among them. They live on a steep hill in Larkspur, in a heavily wooded area with tight, windy roads. They’ve cleared space and shrubs around their homes and replaced potential fuel loads with gravel. “As you can see, I mean this type of area here, if embers do land here, you know they’re not going to catch a light or any dead leaves or anything like that,” Brock said.
“We realized that we’re here and we’re not immune to those same dangers,” Kaplan said. A new study by researchers at the University of California, Berkeley, is providing some concrete data about the impacts of preparing one’s home to withstand a wildfire, particularly in the wildland-urban interface in California. The first-of-its-kind study combined wildfire simulation tools with Cal Fire’s damage inspection data from five of the state’s most destructive fires before 2022.
The models showed that home hardening, such as the use of fire-resistant materials on the roof, walls and decks, and increasing the amount of defensible space together can double the number of homes and other structures that survive a blaze. All that mitigation work is the central focus of the study from the UC Berkeley Fire Research Lab. The study cited that between 2013 and 2018, California wildfires damaged or destroyed approximately 47,000 structures and killed 189 people.
