Oasis Design

Itinerant natural builder Kata Polano applies earth plaster over wooden eaves.

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My heart goes out to all who lost their homes to fire in the past year (including 15 of our friends), and to those who will lose their flammable homes in the future (could be us and most of our wildland neighbors). I give deeply heartfelt thanks to all the firefighters who put their lives on the line to save houses, even though some (like ours) are ridiculously vulnerable.

The last four wildfires made up for much of the controlled burning that we’ve been putting off for the last several decades, while we’ve been busy carpeting the foothills with wooden houses, covered by affordable fire insurance. The Zaca, Gap, Tea, and Jesusita fires removed brush outside of peak fire conditions. They cost us more than 300 houses, and no lives. This, fellow citizens, was incredibly lucky.

The Jesusita Fire alone could have overwhelmed all possible resources had the foothill vegetation been dry instead of pumped with moisture from the rainy season. By contrast, the Painted Cave Fire, which happened in early summer following two dry years, consumed 400 houses in four hours. It only stopped because the wind did. Had we succeeded in putting out the Jesusita, Gap, and Tea fires right away, fuel conditions this fall would be such that the entire South Coast could be incinerated like Pompeii, from Camino Cielo all the way down to smoldering kelp piles on the beach.

There are very inexpensive ways to prevent this •besides inadvertent use of devastating wildfires for brush clearance •but in our market economy, the playing field tends to tip toward the most expensive, most resource-intensive solutions:

• Very large, nearly (but not quite) fireproof new houses built to last 50 years or so.

• Wide roads and driveways for escaping residents and incoming firefighters.

• Mechanical brush clearing. (Our legal system makes the liability from prescribed burns prohibitive).

• Heroic, high-dollar fire suppression.

• Expensive insurance for when these measures don’t work.

• Lots of carbon generated at every step above, which feeds and speeds the climate disruption/higher fire spiral.

Unable to afford the expensive fix, Mexico does a cheap, smart, and ecological thing: stands aside while frequent, low-intensity fires remove the brush around masonry structures (that can’t burn), at the same time conveniently disposing of low-durability, simple wood structures (that burn clean).

When we here in Santa Barbara can no longer afford to do things in the most economically and ecologically expensive way, that’s roughly what we’ll do. Here’s what it might look like:

•Enough fireproof structures to shelter trapped residents: small, attractive adobe residences built to last centuries, with such excellent fireproofing details they serve as code-required fire bunkers. They would have no exterior wood. They would have tempered, dual-glazed windows with metal frames, metal shutters, metal-framed tile or metal roofs, and exterior fire sprinklers. (We already have one large fireproof bunker, the Westmont Gym, which safely harbored 800 people during the Tea Fire.)

• Inexpensive structures of wood and/or fabric that burn clean every decade or two and are replaced.

• Narrow roads, which are both cheaper and more ecologically sound.

• Targeted suppression, only around houses, by a combination of professionals and, as in Australia •where there is lots of debate about this right now •by residents prepared to stay and defend their own homes.

• Fire-armored water/foam systems and cisterns to actively protect homes.

• Fire-safe landscaping, with clear space and well-irrigated, minimally flammable plants closest to homes.

• Frequent, low-intensity fires to clear out accumulated fuel.

• Orchards zoned to protect homes in the coastal plain from mountain fires.

As fire insurance becomes increasingly unavailable, we will certainly rely more and more on ecological design. It already makes more sense economically to spend an extra $75,000 up front to build in serious fire protection, than $7,500 a year for insurance that pays half the cost of rebuilding. The transition will hurt: The rest of those wooden houses •yours, ours •are likely to burn. On the bright side, you can improve your odds by converting a wooden home to an adobe-clad home for far less than the cost to rebuild.

In the future, when our flammable houses are gone, wildfire will wash through the new, green brush and maybe over our adobe homes and fire bunkers every so often, but it will be less of a big deal. We’ll lose a few fruit trees and life goes on.

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