The Halloween-themed tableau infernal above, by Irfan Khan, is included in an extraordinary portfolio of photos from last week's wildfires posted by Matt Welch* on the Los Angeles Times' Opinion LA Blog. The entire selection is worth a look, as it captures the sublime unreality of life in Southern California, where fires such as these are a possibility through much of any given year.
Often enough, surprisingly, California wildfires will scorch vast acreages without loss to life or structures. This past week's fires were not that kind. A Reuters report, posted today at Business Insurance, puts the current losses at 12 lives, with 78 persons injured and the destruction of some 2,300 structures:
Roughly 14,000 insurance claims have been filed from last week's fire and wind storms in California, according to a research group for the property casualty insurance industry.
The New York-based Insurance Information Institute said insurers may have to pay up to $1.6 billion in claims for fires that ravaged the state's homes, farms, vehicles and businesses.
Every year when one or more major fires burn in and around hillside residential developments, the question arises: why encourage construction in obviously imperiled areas? The East Coast variant -- when we aren't benefiting from a two-year string of subnormal Atlantic hurricane seasons -- is to ask why we build and rebuild beach front homes when we know they are just waiting to be swept away to sea.
As the latest fires neared control yesterday, the LA Times' well-respected architecture critic, Christopher Hawthorne, slipped from the arts pages to Page One to opine that "Ignoring Nature, We Build Our Way Into Fire's Path" [the online version of the article receives a somewhat more tabloid-y title: "New developments mask wild land's deadly threat"]. Hawthorne typically leans Green on the subject of development, and this essay is consistent with that approach:
Since the middle of the 20th century, this is how we have developed much of our new housing in the U.S., and particularly in Southern California: by pushing deep into canyons and deserts and onto flood plains. We build reassuringly familiar-looking subdivisions, decorated with vaguely Spanish or Mediterranean accents, in locations that by land-use standards -- and by common-sense standards -- are truly exotic.
We build with the unstinting belief that growth is good and that progress in the form of various kinds of technology -- new building materials, military-style firefighting, a vast system of pumps and levees -- will continue to make it possible to construct new pockets of nostalgic architecture virtually anywhere. But maybe our nostalgia should extend beyond red-tile roofs to include earlier lessons about how and where it is safe to build. . . .
One of the success stories of the last week has been Stevenson Ranch near Santa Clarita, which narrowly averted destruction in part because its houses were built with concrete roof tiles and heat-resistant windows. But to celebrate this neighborhood as a model for escaping fire is itself a kind of escapism. The question is never, why am I building here on this hillside that predictably catches fire every few years in the fall (and maybe now in spring or summer too)? It is, instead, how can technology and new materials -- how can progress -- protect me from the dangers inherent in living where I have chosen to live?
Although Hawthorne is not stating them in that way, these are really no more than classic risk management questions. We are presented with a known peril -- wildfire -- and must ask ourselves how best to address it. One answer is to assume that the loss will occur, but to cushion the blow by purchasing insurance. Another approach is risk prevention: utilize technology in order to limit the damage the peril will cause when it comes calling. Hawthorne's preferred approach, plainly, would be risk avoidance: there's a serious risk over there, so let's just not go there in the first place.
The answer to the question "why are you building here" is usually a simple one, whether we build in the hills or put down floor at the shore: "I'm building here because I want to live here, because the air seems cleaner, because the view is delightful, and because I am (if I have my wits about me) prepared accept the risks and to take the actions or bear the costs necessary to build and live in this risky place."
That answer does not address concerns for the preservation of wilderness qua wilderness -- which is undoubtedly a significant additional factor in Hawthorne's critical view of hillside development -- but it is a reasonable and prudent response from the standpoint of facing and managing risk. If you don't ask for a subsidized or free ride -- insurance, for example, that is artificially underpriced in the name of "affordability" -- feel free to build your house on sand or in the canyons.
Just remember, and be prepared to accept in some fashion, that the rule in southern California is well settled: "If you build it, the fires will surely come."
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* UPDATE [1132 PDT]: It seems that Matt Welch is becoming a fixture of fire-related discussions here at Decs&Excs. In addition to his Opinion LA post linked above, I cited his 2003 Reason article on the California FAIR Plan last week here. One more citation is essential:
On today's Los Angeles Times opinion page, in an item smolderingly yclept "Burn, burn, burn, burn, burn the rich," Matt takes note of a creative and effective response to the wildfire peril -- the AIG insurance plan, to which I alluded in this post, that provides its admittedly well-heeled insureds with benefits that include a private fire response team -- and is bemused by the howling outrage it inspires in some quarters:
You would think that the cheap availability of potent fire retardant, and the creation of supplementary firefighting capability — with costs borne entirely by the homeowners who choose to live in fire zones, instead of everyday taxpayers — would be a cause for at least mild enthusiasm. Instead, it was greeted with howls of class warfare.
Numerous colorful examples -- and at least one suggestion that class-based arson would be a laudable social policy -- make the whole thing worth reading, if you can keep your eyes on it while shaking your head in disbelief. Hot stuff indeed.
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Post title, in the spirit of Halloween, from "The Ghosts' High-Noon" in Gilbert & Sullivan's Ruddigore.
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