I know, I’ve seen them. They’re firetraps.
This is indicative that the entire development needs to have defensible space around the outside of it. The fuel loads inside the development need to be managed - the developers put it there... they should think about the fire consequences of the landscaping they install.
California could solve many of these issues if they wanted to. They could control fuel loads with controlled burns.... but they’re too busy worshiping their precious air quality regulations. They could strip off the flammable brush and replace it with something like a crested wheat seeding, but... they’re too busy with their commitment to ‘native species.’ They could have emergency stores of water positioned throughout the area, but they’d rather have green lawns and landscaping.
The list goes on and on.
You have to understand why I’m so jaded. I read your red flag weather reports and say “less than 15% humidity? Feh. I’ve seen days down to 3% humidity in Nevada.” Most days from the second week of May until the second week of September, the humidity is less than 15%, and in summer, many days are under 10. You can hang laundry on the line and by the time you get done hanging the wet clothes, you go back to the start and pull off the dry clothes. Max time to dry a load of laundry in 5%/15MPH conditions? About seven minutes. There’s utterly no point in using a dryer; it would take longer than hanging them on the line.
Winds 5 gusting to 35? That’s EVERY day after the first week of June and until the third week of August.
While these are summer-long conditions in Nevada, they’re also conditions that predictably occur every autumn in SoCal. Yet EVERY year, they have more and more fires, with bigger and bigger involvement, because California has become an area completely devoid of simple common sense.
Dealing with these conditions isn’t difficult, or even expensive. For example, I could cut a 100’ firebreak around a 500 home development in a week. Give me another week and I’d have it all seeded to crested wheatgrass. One guy, one D6, and a range drill. It would probably take me about, oh, 1,000 gallons of diesel, perhaps less, and about 5 lbs/acre of seed. Seed cost - let’s be generous and say $2.50/lb. Diesel cost? Let’s call it $4.00/gal.
Let’s say I’m doing this around a square mile of development, ie, a block of land 1 mile square. 100’ by four miles is about 50 acres. $4,000 in fuel, 250 lbs of seed (let’s be generous - $1000+ for the seed) and we’re up to about $5000 in materials.
Let’s say I charge $35/hour for the Cat. Heck, I’ll be a rip-off artist and charge $100/hour for the Cat. Figure 50 hours for the scape-down and grading, 50 hours for seeding, total of 100 hours, at $100 bucks, that’s $10K.
For $15K in time and materials, I reckon I could significantly increase the protection of an entire development.
In the late summer, you could have someone come in with cattle and graze off the buffer area if you wanted. 50 acres of crested wheat could be grazed off by 50 head of cattle in about two weeks, tops. Charge them, oh, $5.00 per head for the two weeks. Put the grazing fees into a kitty to help offset the cost of maintaining the fire break.
Californians, however, like everything to be as complicated as possible, as they worship their interlocking set of contradictory agendas. So you get what we have here: a 100% predictable event with tragic consequences. This is about like watching someone play on the train tracks who ignores other people’s entreaties to get off the tracks. Instead, they lecture us on train schedules and horn regulations.
When said person gets turned into pulp by a freight train.... well, it is hard to work up much sympathy.