Correction: California Wildfires-Rebuild or Rethink story
A corrected version of the story is below:
Tough choice for wildfire survivors: Rebuild fast or better?
Wildfire survivors left with little but white ash and hard choices: Rebuild quickly as before, rebuild defensively against future fires, or abandon some burned neighborhoods entirely as lethal mistakes in the country's most wildfire-prone state
By
With
The weeks since have given rise to conflicting desires for rebuilding.
Many families are eager to rebuild as before, and local officials have vowed to speed them along. Wildfire experts, meanwhile, are urging
If authorities take bigger steps toward fire-safety now, "when the next fire comes, which it will, the horrific impacts will be avoided," said
Following wildfires, urban areas tend to build up more densely despite the remaining fire risk, and residents tend to build in only as many fire-defense measures as regulations require, researchers with the
Rebuilding also often takes years longer than residents realize. In
"We found people generally don't change their behavior in terms of how they rebuild, what materials they use, or how they landscape, if there aren't incentives in place," said
The motivation to quickly rebuild often leaves little time for authorities to impose tougher fire standards, Kramer said.
In the hard-hit
Flames spread fast among houses crowded together on hilltops for million-dollar views over the coastal ridges. Homeowners bent on getting as much house as possible on their lots can make them more vulnerable in wildfires, experts say.
In Fountaingrove as elsewhere now, many just want to "try and get houses rebuilt on the same footprint for the least amount of money," said
The affluent neighborhood was an acknowledged fire-risk area in a state that the national
Mayor
"People have a right to rebuild what they had, if that's what they want to do," Coursey told a meeting last month. "I don't think we have any business getting in their way, legal or otherwise."
Those neighborhoods "lost the largest number of structures, but I am not going to say you cannot rebuild," Gorin said.
Newer building codes already in place in
How insurance companies respond to the disaster also will be critical. Some homeowners could find it harder or impossible to get home insurance, state insurance commissioner
Fire experts point to a host of defensive measures homeowners could adopt, from fire-resistant roofing and screens that keep embers out of attics to keeping flammable vegetation far from homes. Communities require local-level planning, such as steps to discourage crowding of structures and encourage evacuation procedures, experts say.
Many homeowners also will confront the reality that their insurance payouts won't cover the additional cost of fire-proofing or other safety upgrades.
Land-use planning that could bar building in the most vulnerable areas is harder to pull off politically, fire researchers note.
Ultimately, "all of us as taxpayers are sort of picking up the bill in one way or the other" for wildfires, said
In Fountaingrove, David and
"I honestly thought it was more suburban here than could ever be taken over by an out-of-control wildfire,"
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