Re:America in flames
by WalterBright on Friday September 11, 2015 @02:06PM
(#10205223)
Houses can also be made much more fire resistant than they are. Use metal and masonry for the exterior surfaces rather than wood and asphalt, for example. Keep the fuel and vegetation away from the walls. Build a masonry fence as a fire break. It's all just common sense.
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Have you seen what these fires do?! Your metal exterior surface will become a puddle of metal, and your masonry fence will be a pile of rubble.
Re:America in flames
by WalterBright on Friday September 11, 2015 @04:15PM
(#10205920)
A house built this way famously survived a fire in California a few years back.
http://www.concretethinker.com/solutions/Disaster-Resistance...
Some friends of mine built a house this way in Montana, and the firefighters told them that if all Montanans built their wilderness homes that way, their job would be a lot easier.
You can find a lot of information on this by googling for "fire resistant home".
Fires will jump over that masonry. Unless you live in a concrete dome, the fire will get across. These are infernos not unlike the fires of hell. Fire is almost raining down on you. Fire resistant doesn't work in the middle of a serious wildfire.
Defense in depth works just fine for wild fires. Step 1 is zero trees or flammable brush near structure, step to is active misters to keep place damp.
Quick and dirty approach is to use a controlled burn to clear brush near property and then just use a sprinkler system.
Granted these are far from 100% effective, but even a 50/50 shot at saving a property is worth a fair amount of effort.