Than that Wildfires in Los Angeles While hundreds of homes lay in ruins, a family that lost everything in the worst wildfire in Colorado history says there is a better way to rebuild.
Three years ago, Erik Ela, his wife and now four-year-old son Alex lost their two cats and their home in the Marshall fire. It was two days before Alex's birthday.
“We experienced something I never thought you would ever experience, and I'm ready for it to happen again,” Ela said.
When it came time to rebuild, the father from Superior, Colorado wanted to protect his new home from fire – so he decided on a design concept called passive house.
In a traditional house design, in the event of a fire, embers are usually drawn into the interior of the house through roof vents. This is one reason homes in Los Angeles burn from the inside out. According to Johny Rezvani, a Passive House material supplier, there are very few places where embers can get trapped in a house built using the Passive House concept.
Compared to the roof ventilation of most houses, a passive house only has a single air inlet. A powerful filtration system is installed to control airflow, helping to keep embers out.
“And in an extreme weather situation, if you had to evacuate, you would close that inlet,” Rezvani said.
In Los Angeles, where the historic Palisades and Eaton fires were fueled by strong Santa Ana winds, a house that followed passive building principles was the only one left standing in its neighborhood.
Despite a higher chance of surviving a fire, cost is the reason not all new homes are built passively. According to the Passive House Network, building a passive house can be up to 7% more expensive compared to a more traditional home.
Only six of the 300 homes rebuilt in Superior are passive houses. Although a new Colorado state law aims to change the way homes most at risk of wildfires are built.
“I was shocked that we don’t require building standards,” said Democratic state Sen. Lisa Cutter. “If your home is not well protected and you don’t do everything you can to contain fires around the property, etc., you are putting your neighbor’s home at risk.”
Cutter pushed for the creation of Colorado's Wildfire Resiliency Code Board. It will identify areas at highest risk of wildfires and enforce mandatory building codes for wildfires for the first time. In Colorado, places where a million structures will be built encounter or mix with natural areas where there is a risk of wildfire. A One-third of all U.S. homes are in high-risk areas – that’s 44 million households.
As climate change leads to windy and dry conditions that increase the risk of rapidly spreading fires, it is time for some to rethink how they live with it and how they can rebuild afterward.
David Schechter