Posted on 01/10/2025 8:58:35 AM PST by dennisw
Hollywood star Mel Gibson got home from talking to Joe Rogan about his anger at the Los Angeles wildfires to find his own Malibu home among those “completely toasted.”
“I was kind of ill at ease while we were talking because I knew my neighborhood was on fire, so I thought, ‘I wonder if my place is still there,’” the actor, 69, told NewsNation’s “Elizabeth Vargas Reports” late Thursday.
“The Patriot” actor, who blasted California Gov. Gavin Newsom over his handling of the crisis during his interview with the mega-popular podcaster, said his Malibu property was in “cinders” by the time he returned.
“I have never seen a place so perfectly burnt,” he said.
“There was a dozen places or so that were just non-existent. I mean, nothing but a chimney and a few roof tiles, and you dare not walk around for the nails and the whole deal. The vehicles were gone, everything,” Gibson ad
“But when I got home, sure enough, it wasn’t there.”
(Excerpt) Read more at nypost.com ...
Nice place
Mel, it’s a good time to move out of CA.
do it before you start to rebuild.
He didn’t know he needed to have his own fire suppression system—He shouldn’t need one. Go woke—get burned out. How many will never re-build but move to another state? You just lost the entertainment industry in California. Another victory for Red China.
We had a house in Paradise and sold it a few years before that fire. A lot of people were proud to have trees blocking view from their street. You had to get a permit to remove a tree. I only thought what a fire would do to that city.
Ron Howard made a movie “Rebuilding Paradise”. I bought the DVD.
I remember watching a news report a few days after the Paradise fire.
They were standing in front of a foundation with only the chimney remaining.
There were at least five trees within 10-15’ of the house.
I said to my wife: “no wonder the whole town burned down”.
They were living in the forest with huge trees overhanging the houses.
I live in southern NH. When I bought this 1972 house 14 years ago there were multiple trees within 15’ of the house.
It screwed up the drainage. Even though the house sits on a hill 40’ above the road I would get water in the basement in the late winter early spring.
I hired a logging crew that cut for a week. I have 12 acres.
I then hired an excavator twice. They corrected the drainage problem and cleared about 2 acres, brought in a bunch of loam. Now, my biggest problem is that I had to buy a Skag 52” commercial mower to keep the time mowing down.
I have not had water in the basement for over almost 12 years.
Removing vents causes other problems. They are there for a reason. They remove moisture, prevent mold, regulate temperature, lower energy costs, prevent roof damage.
They have vents that do not allow or restrict ember entry and vents that seal shut when it gets hot.
Even with Hardy board and other resistant materials, the underlay material can get hot enough to burn. Our neighbor’s house was metal clad and it burned.
Trees usually aren’t a huge problem as long as tree liter is removed, and there aren’t any ladder fuels. That may be a big if. Crown fires are rare, that is where the fire advances via tree top without any aid from the ground fuels.
Paradise just had too much vegetation period, but yes, the less the vegetation the better.
Still, we see many stand alone structures, Ralph’s grocery in Palusade, BOA in Palisades , K-Mart in Santa Rosa, fast food restaurants with little around them in the middle of a parking lot burn.
There are many variables, but that doesn’t mean you don’t do what you can.
There was a fire on Laguna Beach in 1993 that burned a whole hillside going down towards the beach. When the fire was done there was ONE house remaining on the hill right in the middle. Every other house around it had burned to the foundation.
The house was relatively new. It DID NOT have soffit vents. It had a special kind of roof vents. Its sidewalls and roof were made out of fireproof/resistant materials. There was an article all about how this house had survived while all the others were destroyed.
I just found an article about it:
I BELIEVE this is the same house:
https://www.latimes.com/archives/la-xpm-1993-11-06-hm-53777-story.html
Here are the key construction elements:
A. Eaves: Narrow eaves between the roof and exterior walls are sealed with stucco. There are no ventilator panels in the eaves, so flames could not get in from underneath.
B. Roof: Non-flammable concrete roof tiles are nailed down, so they won’t not rip off in high winds.
C. Roof ventilators: Air comes into the attic crawl space through vents at the front and rear of the house and leaves through vents on the top of the roof.
D. Decks: Bottoms of decks are finished with stucco.
E. Side porch: Firefighters were able to stand on the side porch to fight flames from the next-door house, only 14 feet away.
F. Lower windows: On the lower level of the house, five small windows are set in a foot-thick concrete wall. This helped keep out heat from surrounding burning houses.
G. Walls: Exterior: One-inch thick stucco siding; no exposed wood. Lower-level walls are one-foot thick concrete.
Sorry, I left off these two last parts:
H. Windows and skylights: Double-paned windows helped keep heat out. The outer panes on two windows broke, but the inner panes continued to protect the home. Two overhead skylights imported from Germany are made of double-paned glass. Conventional plastic skylights would have melted, allowing embers to fall into the home.
I. Landscaping: The yard is kept clean of dry brush and weeds. No tall, dry trees are near the house. Much of the landscaping is done in water-retaining plants; ice-plant under the rear decks helped keep the fire at bay.
“Removing vents causes other problems.”
You still have a POWER vent at the peak of the roof. You eliminate continuous soffit vents.
IF all the items in this article were made part of the building codes in these fire prone areas there would be a lot less loss of structures.
Probably protected for studying worm poop.
Judgement from God?
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