NFPA Journal - November/December 2020 - 33
Images of Santa Rosa, California, following the devastating Tubbs Fire in 2017, at left, and a destroyed neighborhood in the
process of being rebuilt. Despite its recent experience with a catastrophic fire, however, the city has come under criticism
for disregarding many of the state's recommendations for safer building practices in fire-prone areas. GETTY IMAGES
devastation in the built environment.
Those steps include limiting or even
eliminating development in high-risk
wildfire areas and requiring fire-resistant materials and landscapes where
development is allowed. But in too
many places, that simply isn't happening. "In California, every impediment
[to smarter land use] comes back to
money and competing priorities...
it really comes down to what local
governments, economically speaking,
are incentivized to do," Edith Hannigan, the statewide manager of the
California Board of Forestry and Fire
Protection's land use planning policies, said in an interview with NFPA
Journal. The problem is apparent
even in Santa Rosa, where city officials have drawn criticism for mostly
disregarding the state's suggested
wildfire-smart building standards in
order to replace thousands of burned
structures as quickly as possible.
The longer we go without widespread adoption of stricter land use
and development polices, the more
difficult it will be to ever get a handle
on the problem. By 2050, an additional 12 million acres of wild and
agricultural lands in California will
be turned into exurban land-defined
as housing settlements outside of
the suburbs-according to a 2014
study published in the journal Land
Use Policy. Over that time, the study
reported, an estimated 1 million new
houses will be built in areas in California that are designated as very
high risk for wildfire.
The pace of growth is similar across
the western and southern US. According to the US Census Bureau, western
communities with populations under
5,000 people-areas that are typically
prone to wildfire-averaged 13 percent population growth over the last
decade, the highest for small towns in
any region. By contrast, the northeast
saw its small-town population decline
by 3 percent over the same period.
-Jesse Roman
33%
Estimated percentage of all US
homes located in the wildland/
urban interface, or WUI
4.5 MILLION
Number of US homes located in
the WUI that face high or extreme
risk of wildfire
2 MILLION
Number of those high or extreme
risk homes located in California
1 MILLION
Number of new homes projected
to be built in "very high" risk
wildfire areas in California by
2050
Sources: Proceedings of the National
Academy of Sciences; Verisk; Verisk;
Land Use Policy
N F PA . O R G / J O U R N A L * NFPA JOURNAL
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NFPA Journal - November/December 2020
Table of Contents for the Digital Edition of NFPA Journal - November/December 2020
Contents
NFPA Journal - November/December 2020 - Cover1
NFPA Journal - November/December 2020 - Cover2
NFPA Journal - November/December 2020 - 1
NFPA Journal - November/December 2020 - 2
NFPA Journal - November/December 2020 - 3
NFPA Journal - November/December 2020 - Contents
NFPA Journal - November/December 2020 - 5
NFPA Journal - November/December 2020 - 6
NFPA Journal - November/December 2020 - 7
NFPA Journal - November/December 2020 - 8
NFPA Journal - November/December 2020 - 9
NFPA Journal - November/December 2020 - 10
NFPA Journal - November/December 2020 - 11
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NFPA Journal - November/December 2020 - 33
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NFPA Journal - November/December 2020 - 35
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NFPA Journal - November/December 2020 - 80
NFPA Journal - November/December 2020 - Cover3
NFPA Journal - November/December 2020 - Cover4
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