In San Diego’s suburbs, the homes on the outer edges of developments and in close proximity to the surrounding countryside are the first to burn. (Photo by Lisa Ann Pinkerton)
During the past 20 years, we’ve been building
homes closer to nature. Whether it’s near coastal areas
or in the wilderness, homebuyers want to live in more
natural settings. But… Lisa Ann Pinkerton reports
often that means putting people and property in the path
of floods or fire:
Transcript
During the past 20 years, we’ve been building
homes closer to nature. Whether it’s near coastal areas
or in the wilderness, homebuyers want to live in more
natural settings. But… Lisa Ann Pinkerton reports
often that means putting people and property in the path
of floods or fire:
2007 was the second worst in history for wildfires in the U.S. Nine-million acres were
scorched and Southern California bore the brunt of it. Most of the property damage was
in San Diego where wildfires in wilderness areas spread to suburban neighborhoods. Half a
million people were evacuated and Shannon Denton was among them. She says her
neighborhood was cleared out at 4 in the morning.
“We were scared. ‘Cause we didn’t – luckily we had all our pictures organized, so we just took most of our pictures and our video stuff, grabbed our kids at the last minute and left within a half-hour. It was scary, very
scary.”
(construction sound)
These days, Denton’s subdivision is busy. There are bulldozers demolishing the burned
out remains of old houses. And construction crews are building new ones on every single
street.
Denton’s thankful her house was spared. But she says even if it had burned down, she’d
take the risk of it happening again, because she likes living here.
“It’s pretty close to nature. There’s a lot of walking and hiking, a lot of mountains that you can take trails and different things.”
Despite the risk of fire, people like Denton don’t want to leave. Some of the 18-
thousand homes lost in San Diego last fall were built in places where wildfires had
burned only four years earlier.
That’s not unusual. The US Fire Administration says nearly 40% of new home
development across the country is in places where residential homes and wilderness meet,
and thus, are more prone to fire.
“They have a right to build that single family home.”
That’s Jeff Murphy of San Diego County’s Department of Planning.
“As a jurisdiction its our responsibility to have codes and ordinances that are
in place to make sure that there’s minimal structural damage as the result of wildfire and minimize
the risk of loss of life.”
Murphy says people are going to live where they want to, all government can do is
require smart development. And San Diego’s building codes are the most restrictive in
the California. They were reevaluated after the 2003 wildfires, when seven percent of the
homes were destroyed.
In the 2007 wildfires, Murphy says the new codes reduced that loss to one-percent.
“Even though we had a lot of structure loss during these fires, what these
numbers are showing us is that our codes are working.”
And Americans aren’t just building in areas at risk of fire. We build in flood zones, too.
FEMA estimates around 10 million people in the US are at risk of flooding. And
according to the United Nations, we saw the most floods of any country last year.
Roger Kennedy is a former director of the National Park Service. He says this kind of
“risky living” costs US taxpayers about two-billion dollars a year in firefighting and
rebuilding costs. The total in property damage hovers around 20 Billion.
Kennedy says people are choosing to build and live on land that’s in danger-prone areas
because they’re not responsible for the true costs. Insurance, guaranteed mortgages, and
federal disaster relief have reduced the personal financial risk.
“People wouldn’t settle in places from which they knew they would not be
rescued and where the taxpayers wouldn’t pick up- or the insurance company which is
essentially the same thing- wouldn’t pick up the tab.”
Kennedy says knowing about a home’s potential risk might reduce the material cost of
fires and floods. And, it might save lives.
But he says, people have to want to know their risks. And even then… they might choose
to ignore it. Because for many, the enjoyment their property brings far outweighs the
occasional “Act of Nature.”
For the Environment Report, I’m Lisa Ann Pinkerton.