{"id":561,"date":"2019-06-07T11:36:17","date_gmt":"2019-06-07T18:36:17","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.growthesandiegoway.com\/blog\/entries\/?p=561"},"modified":"2019-06-13T10:07:26","modified_gmt":"2019-06-13T17:07:26","slug":"union-tribune-touts-industry-talking-points-in-editorial-defending-firetrap-projects","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.growthesandiegoway.com\/blog\/entries\/2019\/06\/07\/union-tribune-touts-industry-talking-points-in-editorial-defending-firetrap-projects\/","title":{"rendered":"Union Tribune touts industry talking points in editorial defending firetrap projects."},"content":{"rendered":"\n

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Our latest Op Ed in Voice of San Diego<\/a> received a lot of attention, so much so that the Union Tribune saw fit to publish an editorial the very next day defending the latest firetrap development being proposed in the County. The editorial<\/a>, like much of what is provided by industry-backed PR firms, is full of inconsistencies and inaccuracies. <\/em> <\/p>\n\n\n\n

The County\u2019s general plan calls for increased housing in strategically-located areas around the county where there is the least amount of fire risk and nearer to denser villages with plenty of infrastructure. This careful plan took 13 years, involved hundreds of community and stakeholder meetings and cost $18 million dollars to put together. Unfortunately, that plan is being disassembled piecemeal by haphazard General Plan Amendments which disregard the risks that the plan was intended to mitigate.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The San Diego Union-Tribune\u2019s editorial board recently put together a pro-firetrap sprawl editorial<\/a>, mirroring closely the sprawl developer\u2019s primary PR strategy: downplay catastrophic fire risk in one of the areas with the highest fire risk in the County. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Once again, they are touting the building industry line<\/a>, \u201cconstruction standards are better now, nothing to worry about.\u201d The main premise is that Rancho Santa Fe did ok during the Witch fire with its more wildfire resistant standards so we shouldn\u2019t worry about the backcountry sprawl projects that will use similar standards. The premise is flawed. Let\u2019s take a look at their various arguments:<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Rancho Santa Fe survived the Witch Fire due to improved construction standards, so sprawl projects will too.<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

This argument is quite misleading. The authors are conflating large lot, rural homes in one of the wealthiest communities in the country with sprawl developments where hundreds of houses are clustered closely together. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Rancho Santa Fe is nothing like the projects being proposed. These are large lots of two acres or more, with $5 million dollar houses complete with full-time landscaping staffs that maintain defensible space year round. Sprawl developments like The Otay Village 14 \/ Planning Area 16 project have houses closely spaced together and it is this proximity that creates conditions for fires to spread quickly as the houses themselves become fuel and spread quickly. Here\u2019s a view of Rancho Santa Fe housing from a bird\u2019s eye view:<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Note how the houses are spread far apart and are mostly manicured and well maintained? Here\u2019s what the next sprawl project in the pipeline (Otay Ranch Village 14) looks like:<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Houses that are closer together are more likely to spread fire than those far apart. In fact, some studies<\/a> show that houses contain more flammable material inside them per yard than in a forest. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"There is actually more flammable material in a house per square yard than in a forest,\" said Michael Ghil, UCLA distinguished professor of climate dynamics and geosciences and co-author of the research, which will be published in the Sept. 4 print edition of Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.<\/pre>\n\n\n\n
The study also recommends fire hardening for those who live in high risk fire area as those houses do not burn as quickly. We should encourage all those who live in the wildland urban interface to make their homes more resistant to fire.  Nonetheless, swimming in shark-infested waters is also a lot safer if you wear puncture resistant gear, but it\u2019s better to avoid swimming in that water altogether, if you can avoid it.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Rancho Santa Fe still had significant structure loss during the Witch Fire.<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n
Aside from the obvious benefits of living amongst billionaires and millionaires, Rancho Santa Fe has one of the best fire districts in the County with more resources per household than the County Fire Authority.  They have a full time staff that conducts yearly defensible space inspections on almost every house in the district. The County Fire Authority just recently announced they would expand their inspections which, once implemented will only hit a paltry 12% of the houses in the unincorporated County every year.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The Witch fire spared most of RSF mostly due to the heroic efforts<\/a> of the RSF Fire District firefighters who dutifully protected the homes and due to some good fortune as well . And yes, while more recently-built homes using the more strict wildfire standards survived, it was more a result of good, defensive space practices and the army of firefighters posted in the area to protect the extremely valuable high-end homes.  Still, 61 homes throughout the fire district did burn.  <\/p>\n\n\n\n
The latest wildland urban interface construction standards did not save hundreds of homes in the firestorms of 2017 and 2018.<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n
According to an analysis of Cal Fire data from the Tubbs Fire defies that logic: A\u00a0building code update<\/a>\u00a0added new fireproofing standards for homes in the wildland-urban interface in 2008. Yet, according to the Cal Fire inventory, 87% of the homes built after that year in the Tubbs Fire footprint were destroyed. (Should Development be Extinguished on California\u2019s Fire Prone Hills?<\/a>) <\/p>\n\n\n\n
In the Thomas Fire, fire protection measures did little to protect<\/a> housing that employed fire hardening measures. 90% of the houses destroyed or damaged had employed fire hardening measures: non-combustible roofing (90%), non-combustible siding (80%), multi paned windows (45%), enclosed eaves (43%) among other interventions.   <\/p>\n\n\n\n
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April 2018, VC Star, Thomas Fire destruction: \u2018The scale of it was beyond belief\u2019<\/a><\/figcaption><\/figure><\/div>\n\n\n\n
In the Camp Fire, which destroyed 18,000 homes and decimated the town of Paradise, it turns out that almost half (179) <\/a>of the homes built after 2008, using latest wildfire resistant construction standards did not survive.  Of course, half did<\/em> survive which attests to the importance of increasing your odds of survival if you have fire hardened construction standards, but certainly these odds are hardly encouraging.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
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(2019, KQED \u201cIn Camp Fire, Newer Houses Were Much Less Damaged<\/a><\/figcaption><\/figure><\/div>\n\n\n\n
The bigger issue is evacuation infrastructure<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n
The most glaring lapse in the argument about whether or not we should be building in the riskiest of wildfire prone areas is the complete inattention to evacuation, which is where the greatest number of fatalities can occur. Regardless of how well-constructed a home is, as shown above, even the most hardened homes have a good chance of burning. As such, shelter-in-place is a worst case scenario and mass evacuation is inevitable. When a fire occurs, communities evacuate either by order or out of fear. Yet, this is where we place the least amount of due diligence and analysis. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
A recent study by The Associated Press looked at all the areas in California listed as Very High Fire Severity zones by CalFire and then assessed the evacuation capacity of those areas by looking at the ratio of population per lane capacity.  There were 23 areas (including Paradise) identified as being in the worst 1% in the state when it comes to population-to-evacuation ratios.  Of those 23, three were in San Diego County and, one of the worst areas was precisely where a developer is proposing a large sprawl project. This very project, Otay Village 14 and Planning Areas 16\/19 (Adara at Otay Ranch), is the one that the Union Tribune appears to be shilling for in their editorial as it is coming in front of the Board of Supervisors on June 26th. When architects plan for a building, fire code requires them to ensure there are sufficient exits and a maximum capacity to avoid entrapment during a fire. If you only have one exit that can safely accommodate 100 people, you cannot double or triple the number of people without increasing the exits. Unfortunately, our land use planning does not follow the same philosophy.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Below is an interactive map that allows you to see how your area fares when it comes to population-to-evacuation ratio. <\/p>\n\n\n\n