Article How well-intentioned policies fueled L.A.’s fires

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The crazy thing is that the wealthier ones will rebuild in the same vulnerable ways and locations. At least a poor family might finally give up trying to live beside a river that overflows. ("Five Feet High and Risin'")
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How well-intentioned policies fueled L.A.’s fires
https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archiv...ng/681288/

EXCERPT: The real story of the wildfires isn’t about malice or incompetence. It’s about well-intentioned policies with unintended consequences.

Take insurance—a trillion-dollar industry built to identify risks, particularly from disasters such as wildfires. Insurance companies communicate this risk to homeowners through higher premiums, providing them with useful information and incentives. People may think twice about moving to a fire-prone area if they see the danger reflected in a fee.

But in 1988, California voters passed Proposition 103, arbitrarily reducing rates by 20 percent and subjecting future rate increases to public oversight. Nobody likes high premiums, of course. But the politicization of risk has been a catastrophe.

Artificially low premiums encouraged more Californians to live in the state’s most dangerous areas. And they reduced the incentive for homeowners to protect their houses, such as by installing fire-resistant roofs and siding materials.

Decades of worsening climate risk alongside suppressed premiums have prompted many insurers to drop coverage altogether. Just last summer, State Farm dropped 1,600 home-insurance plans in Pacific Palisades. Earlier this week, most of the neighborhood was burning.

Many Californians in high-risk areas have been forced to depend on the California FAIR Plan—a public insurer of last resort. In 2023, the plan covered an estimated $284 billion in home value. In 2024, that exposure increased by 61 percent. Within the next few years, California taxpayers could be on the hook for more than a trillion dollars. The state insurance commissioner is scrambling to bring insurers back. But it may be too little, too late.

Artificially low premiums have also spurred new housing production in fire-prone regions on the edges of cities like Los Angeles. From 1990 to 2020, California built nearly 1.5 million homes in the wildlife-urban interface, putting millions of residents in the path of wildfires.

Policy didn’t just pull Californians into dangerous areas. It also pushed them out of safer ones. Over the past 70 years, zoning has made housing expensive and difficult to build in cities, which are generally more resilient to climate change than any other part of the state.

The classic urban neighborhood in America—carefully maintained park, interconnected street grid, masonry-clad shops and apartments—is perhaps the most wildfire-resistant pattern of growth.

By contrast, the modern American suburb—think stick-frame homes along cul-de-sacs that bump up against unmaintained natural lands—may be the least. Several of L.A.’s hardest-hit neighborhoods resemble this model... (MORE - missing details)

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How the Los Angeles Fires Became So Devastating
https://www.city-journal.org/article/la-...ornia-risk

EXCERPTS: The situation in Southern California Chaparral brush is different than in the forests to the north, where a major problem is fire exclusion—deliberately preventing fires in a region—and the century-long build-up of overstocked forests. Nevertheless, mechanical brush removal and prescribed burning can still be used to reduce vegetation and fire danger, though it comes at a cost to ecosystems. And even assuming the increase in regional temperature that we expect to see by 2050, achieving California’s goal of eliminating 1 million acres’ worth of flammable material per year, along with the federal government’s target of removing such material on 50 million acres over a decade, would reduce the future wildfire threat.

Achieving these goals requires overcoming multiple challenges, including funding constraints, workforce shortages, and logistical issues related to complex land-ownership patterns. The California Environmental Quality Act poses bureaucratic and regulatory obstacles to clearing hazardous materials on state land. The National Environmental Policy Act does the same on federal land. The Forest Service’s NEPA reviews, in particular, often culminate in litigation that delays projects by about three years, on average.

[...] Given that extreme fire weather conditions like this will inevitably occur and given that human ignitions cannot be eliminated, protection at the structural level is also vital. Houses are much more resilient to fires if they have no vegetation within five feet of them, and vegetation is sparse and fire-resistant from five feet to 100 feet away. Building codes and “home hardening” also make a difference. Installing non-combustible roofing materials (e.g., metal, tile, or asphalt shingles), ember-resistant vents with mesh screens, and fire-resistant materials for siding (like stucco, fiber cement, or metal) have been shown to be effective in both lab and real-world settings. There is also a synergistic effect, with increased overall effectiveness, as more houses in a neighborhood adopt these practices.

It goes almost without saying that well-resourced firefighting (personal as well as air and ground equipment), as well as high-quality fire-weather forecasting, are critical to slowing down and ultimately containing fires like these.

Devastating events prompt people to search for villains, but reality is more complicated.... (MORE - missing details)