As if people in Florida, the Midwest, and in flood plains across the country DON’T rebuild in the same places that disasters overtake them?
As if the guy who just got totally wiped out magically gets enough money to go buy another patch of land someplace else to build on?
In tornado country, you’re probably statistically safer rebuilding right where ya got hit. Flood plains — depends on the size of the flood; was it a “100 Year Flood” or the annual wash out? Fire? Same. Statistically safer to rebuild right where ya were, and just increase your defensible space over what you had previously.
Florida — ya get your annual dose of equatorial African ugly, and there’s nothing you can do but prep like a beast, roll the bones and hope it’s all standing when the wind dies down.
Fires in California burn different places every year; the same swatch of Earth doesn’t get razed regularly. This particularly murderous flaming massacre will not be seen, again, in our lifetimes.
Mudslides, although portrayed by national media as practically Statewide, are confined to relatively small regions of the State; Malibu is notorious. Sitting at home in Jersey Watching CNN cover it, you’d think all of Malibu takes a dive into the Pacific every February or March; it just isn’t the case. And there are a few other areas that are prone. Maybe this is a “newsflash,” but #fakenews has been around a long damned time. Don’t buy it.
Perhaps. But that will require 100% mandatory ember-proof building codes. There are intact houses with bushes out front and trees in the yard, surrounded by burned houses. The difference was pure luck in some cases, but also the fact that there were fewer entry points for embers (soffits, eaves, roof vents, porches). Those homes had class A roofs. Others did too but the fire started some other way.
There's a lot of emphasis on clearing brush in firewise communities. But that's strictly a problem outside of the built-up areas that burned. The original fires started in heavily overgrown areas, from record rainfall last winter and a typical hot dry summer. Those areas were at fault. But in the built-up areas the houses were not ember-proof. The brush and trees were generally not a problem (although some idiot bureaucrats will require bare yards now). Again, the homes burned to the ground but a home literally 10 feet away at the closest point did not. From luck this time, but ember-proofing next time. In the dense neighborhoods where everything burned, the ember-proofing will have to be 100% or close to it. Otherwise it will happen again, in the same location.