Los Angles needs fireproof communities, not just homes

Planners and residents working to rebuild Los Angeles won’t be starting with a blank slate. Existing roads, infrastructure and land will shape how the city is rebuilt. Some residents may want to rebuild immediately on the same plot of land, while others may be willing to sell their land to create a buffer zone.

Mayor Bass issued an order on January 13 expediting permits “like for like” to rebuild, freeing them from feedback that slows down the rebuild process. Governor Newsom also eased permitting regulations under the California Environmental Quality Act to speed up redevelopment.

Moritz says how L.A. chooses to rebuild is “a matter of social values.” “This is no longer a scientific question. Shouldn’t we as a society consider where and how people build or rebuild that is safer and less impactful from a public funding perspective? Because many of these events will be repeated.”

Wildfires in California have gotten bigger and more damaging in recent years. About 7.08 million acres burned in California between 2009 and 2018, more than doubling. area burned Between 1979 and 1988. The number of fires covering urban areas has also increased. About 22,000 acres of land burned in the 10 years between 1979 and 1988 were in areas called wildland/urban interfaces—areas where residential buildings are close to wildfire-prone nature. In 2009-2018, it increased to 32,000 hectares.

One result of all this is that California authorities have good maps of high-risk areas. The Palisades and Eaton fires were classified as the most affected areas very high fire danger zonesthis means that new developments in these areas must take measures to minimize the risk of fire spreading from wild vegetation to homes, including planting fire-resistant vegetation and keeping any other trees and shrubs trimmed away from homes.

But in cities like Los Angeles, demand for housing is so high that developers often build in these very high fire danger zones. Nicholas Irwin, who studies real estate economics at the University of Nevada, Las Vegas, said that after the fire, developers slowed construction in high-risk areas for a while, but after a few years they returned to their previous growth rates. .

Irwin says cities and local governments need to think about ways to prevent development in high-risk areas. One way would be to raise development taxes in fire-prone areas, and another would be to encourage developers to infill — building more houses and apartments in underutilized urban areas.

“We need denser development, especially in places like Los Angeles. The property market there is out of control and will only get worse,” he says. “We need to think about ways to rebuild roads that allow more units to be built to help affordability, while also being more resilient to future wildfire risks.”

Burying power lines can also go a long way to protecting homes from wildfire risks. the fire that destroys Heaven was on fire With power line failures like at least seven of California’s most destructive wildfires. Burying power lines is not cheap and these costs will pass to utility customers, many of whom do not live in areas at risk of wildfires.

“It’s the little things that can make a difference in the long run,” says Irwin. Burying power lines, encouraging denser development and building more defensible communities. But these long-term investments require people to change the way they think about living in bushfire risk zones and to recognize that more resilient communities come at a cost. “I don’t know that we won’t learn anything,” says Irwin.