Re: Maui Fires
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Out of curiosity, I wonder how many of the houses in Lahaina had wooden shake roofs. Those dry out and are basically kindling.
Mililani had a HOA-type setup where shake roofs were pretty much required in order to keep the appearance of the neighborhood.
OWB, do you recall the stink of when someone dared put a blue roof tile setup on their house in Miliani Town?
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Shake or shingle roofs are an absolute fire hazard. If that was the standard roofing due to Homeowners Association requirements you could say H. A. or city or village's snobish vanity was one of the reasons it spread so fast. The Town to the south of me had a shake roof requirement but finally got rid of it about 5 years ago.
Metal Roofing and the 2018 California Carr Fire – How One Home Survived
and
Designing fire resistant homes in California
Snip...."When the Carr Fire blazed through Redding, a small city in Northern California where Hauser lives, in 2018, the 16 homes closest to his burned to the ground—but Hauser's home was unaffected...."
"Randall Hauser, an architect and the founder and CEO of environmental consulting company ENPLAN, explains that choosing a proper exterior is one of the most effective ways to protect it from fire. “The part of the house that receives the brunt of the fire should all be some sort of non-burnable material,” he explains. When it came time to build his own home in Northern California 25 years ago, a rectangular prism built into the slope of the hill behind it, Hauser chose a stucco exterior, metal roofing, and minimal landscaping; the home is surrounded by pea gravel and concrete, no lush greenery. And that’s just what the eye can see—the walls and roof are extremely well insulated, while the windows are strong tempered glass. Hauser even used the natural hill on his property as added protection. "
Surprisingly, even in Hauser’s neighborhood, wood exteriors are still some of the most popular. “Houses are made up of so much resin and hydrocarbon-based material,” Hauser says, citing plywood and its derivatives, like oriented strand board (OSB). OSB is made by combining bits of wood with resin and compressing it, and is especially at risk during a fire. Newer homes are often made using OSB, and, according to Hauser, “are far more vulnerable to wildfire… because it just peels apart when it starts to burn. And all of these layers of wood that were pressed together then become airborne. So they're a huge generator of a fire risk.”
Swapping out siding is no small project. Which is why some folks have turned, instead, to treating their home's exterior to make it fire-proof. Jim Moseley—founder and CEO of Sun FireDefense, which devises fire prevention technologies—explains that one of his company’s most popular products called an “Intumescent Coating” is an invisible layer sprayed onto a home’s exterior, usually mixed in with a coat of paint. “We have a very high temperature, long lasting formula that basically is an aerospace-grade fire retardant,” Moseley explains. (The team developed this formula by using the aerospace technology that protects rockets upon their re-entry into the earth’s atmosphere!)
There is additional information at both the links. (Slide over.)
As I recall that particular stink was less about the tile and more about the blue color. Conventional tile roofs are quite standard in HI, especially with the oriental folks. By the time the 70’s were over shake roofs had fallen out of style for a number of reasons.