Hello, and thanks for joining us, for sustaining us here on KLCS Public Media.

I'm David Nazar.

Today, months after the deadly and devastating 2025 Los Angeles wildfires, the Palisades and Eastern fires, many Los Angeles residents are now asking, pleading to find out how can they safeguard their homes?

Are there any preventive measures they can take to make their homes more resilient, more fire resilient to protect themselves and their houses from destruction?

So now I return here to Altadena and L.A. County, where the Eastern Fire ravaged this community back in January to talk with some more residents and building experts.

You can see we are on New York Drive in Altadena and this entire hillside is on fire.

It has already crossed the street, and there's a building here that is in danger of also going up in flames.

You can see right there on the hillside, just another home completely gone from this fire.

So this morning, picture of these cars trying to get out of the Palisades.

Now the building tonight, southern California Edison now saying its equipment may have sparked the worst fire in Sylmar.

Come in.

Shocked disbelief.

It's sort of like, how do you how do you even tell your kids?

Like, your house burned down, your school burned down?

It's just the total loss of the community.

It's, I really felt just the sense of that community that we we had each other's backs.

We could share.

Share child care.

We could, drop our kids off with a neighbor and go run an errand.

Everyone was really looked out for each other.

It was.

It's a it's a great place to live.

Sarah Wolf relocated from the east coast to southern California just a few years ago with her family.

They were instantly drawn to the city of Altadena and Los Angeles County.

Everything Altadena had to offer, the mountains, the storybook scenery, the picturesque hiking, the biking trails, the schools, the amazing neighbors of this quaint Norman Rockwell s community of Eaton Canyon in the San Gabriel Mountains.

Sarah and her family had a great life.

That is until January 7th, when the Eaton Fire and its massive 80 mile an hour Santa Ana winds swept through this community, destroying almost everything in its path, save for just a few homes here and there, out of thousands that somehow, miraculously, were not reduced to ash.

The tragic irony for Sarah is that she is now a fire victim herself, having basically spent her entire career researching and developing how homes and buildings can be more sustainable and more fire resilient.

I'm sort of in the unique, although probably not desirable position of experiencing wildfire firsthand, but also being able to bring in my professional experience and background to the giant task of rebuilding not just our home, but helping neighbors and the community to to rebuild and access resources and and understand what it takes to rebuild in a more sustainable and resilient way.

Because what we don't want, or at least what you know, I don't want is, to rebuild my 1924 very drafty, home that was not at all fire resilient.

So we can't go back to the way things were 100 years.

And we need to be looking to the future and looking to to be prepared for the next wildfire or the next flood or the next whatever natural disaster is coming.

So just how should we prepare for the next wildfire?

Prepare for Mother Nature's wrath.

That can be so cataclysmic all throughout the United States, whether here in Los Angeles or other parts of the nation vulnerable to these massive blazes everywhere from California to Arizona to Colorado and Montana to Texas and Florida, as we're thinking about rebuilding, one of the things that we're that we're really looking at is, you know, obviously we got to meet all the new codes, energy codes through title 24.

We need to meet all the wildfire codes.

Our street and neighborhood was just reclassified, in the, in the Cal Fire sort of state designated, high fire zone.

So that's something new to contend with.

And we we want to use the, you know, the most latest, you know, building techniques we want to build in a greener way.

We want, you know, not to have a drafty old house anymore at the US Green Building Council, California.

We have a range of resources and toolkits, that were developed before the L.A. wildfires.

In response to previous, California wildfires.

So we have our wildfire defense, for contractors and for landscapers training.

This is free training.

We offer, and people can gain a certificate and learn how to build, a more resilient home, the US Green Building Council, California or US GVC California, as it's known, offers various toolkits for both homeowners and residents.

All the info you need to know about wildfire defense and recovery.

And this nonprofit organization has published a new fire rebuilding guide that takes a very comprehensive approach to things like where exactly is the best place on your lot to build your house?

How much setback should you have?

What kinds of trees should you be planting?

What materials should you be using in your rebuild that are safer and more fire resilient and certainly more sustainable things that could possibly help save your home during a fire.

The eating fire victims know of this destruction all too well.

These past months have been unbelievably challenging for them.

What has been the most difficult part for you so far in this process?

The most difficult part, is all the forms I have to fill in and all the all the sort of second and third jobs that I that I'm doing, just to regain what we lost.

So there's a lot there's a lot of paperwork.

People don't tell you why after a natural disaster that you'll be spending so much time, dealing with FEMA and, insurance and just filling in endless forms.

So that's been that's been pretty exhausting.

What have been some of those challenges?

You don't have to give the name of the insurance carrier.

What are the challenges?

What do you have to deal with?

So some of the challenges are, getting a fair and accurate estimate of what we lost and ensuring that the estimate actually reflects market realities and is a, hasn't been developed only by software, but actually reflects the fact that we're in LA County, labor costs, material costs.

It's not an inexpensive place, in which to build, you know, on a on a good day, let alone when there are thousands of people trying to rebuild at the same time.

Leslie Lowes and Michael McKay were some of the lucky ones, the scant few of Altadena, California, who did not lose their home in the heat and fires.

Their home was not burned to the ground, partly because years before, Leslie and Michael did reinforce their home to a degree to safeguard themselves from a fire.

Altadena and its wildland urban sprawl coexistence has been extremely vulnerable to wildfires for decades, a city that's been victim to these fires over the years, Leslie and Michael knew that and tried to take some proactive measures.

With that said, Leslie and Michael still suffered a lot of interior fire damage to the Altadena House due to all the smoke, soot and ash that seeped through their doors and windows during the January and fire.

They've had to relocate temporarily while their home is now being repaired and the couple is going to do everything possible to further reinforce their home to make the house even more fire resilient so they don't meet the same fate as their Altadena neighbor, Sarah Wolfe.

In the event of a future fire, we took a fire resiliency tour of their house.

Also joining us is Chris Bowen.

Chris is a contractor and third generation and owner of Legacy Homebuilders, the company Leslie and Michael hire to now help make their home more fire resistant.

So the housing stock in Altadena is 70 to 120 years old.

And so I don't need to tell you, it didn't have the modern engineering techniques that we have today.

For fire resiliency, you need to have a good defensible space.

And there's different zones that you do.

There's the zoning right up close to the house within five feet.

And then there's a place beyond that.

And that's what we're standing in right now.

That's another thing that helped saved our house because there's no plant material and we have a barrier close to the house.

So there is no plant material.

Here it's all decomposed granite.

And we have that, throughout this side of the house.

After the 2009 station fire, we realized we had stucco on the house.

And that's a fairly good fire retardant, but not as good as what modern engineering can do.

And so what we did after the 2009 fire, and I'm going to step down here.

And by the way, one of the reasons this house survived is you can see we're on a ridge between two canyons and the ridge around the lower end here, and it gains elevation in the windward direction.

Right.

And so we were in a bit of a wind shadow when the winds are blowing 75mph.

And so these embers were literally just flying horizontally.

And so I think that was part of the reason we survived.

Another reason is our house is set into the hill.

It's low profile oak trees.

And we have two here and two in our front yard.

Oak trees are ember catchers.

Because the leaves typically do not burn up in the tree.

And yet they catch the embers that are flying around and it turns out 80% of our property is under the canopy of an oak tree.

So they very much protected the house in some sense.

We've got a lot going on on the roof.

You got a lot going on with the siding.

You got other stuff.

Talked about some stuff you did.

And then I'm going to have Chris advance the narrative, so to speak, and let us know what more you should be doing.

So when it comes to fire retardant and fire resilient measures, it's like burglaries you can layer in different levels of security.

No one thing will save you, but just the layering of all these different things put together and hopefully good things happen at the end.

Okay, can I can I mention one thing which is, doing all the fire hardening isn't going to guarantee your house isn't going to burn down, but it buys you time, so it slows down the heating and the potential sites that it can catch fire.

So one thing we did is strip off the stucco that was on the house, and then upgraded the electrical and plumbing system and the insulation wall.

It was open, but then we replaced it with, it looks like wood, but it's not wood.

It's a fiber cement composite.

So it's billed as being, fire resistant.

So that was one thing we did, Chris, from a contractor expertise.

They have done so much to safeguard themselves.

What more should they be doing?

What do you look for?

Is class A fire rated material, right, especially on the exterior of the building.

So, the fiber cement is class A fire rated roofing, usually is.

But what happens a lot is underneath.

You know, they put soffits, but it's wood, and the fire starts at the base and the heat rises and it catches the eaves on fire, the wood.

And it just expands in the house and it's over.

So they've done that.

A few things that we talked about is on the roof.

They do have an asphalt shingle, which is Class-A fire rated, but it's, embers can still sit and it's made of, you know, it's a petroleum resin oil compounds.

So it can if the ember sits long enough or there's an area exposed, it can ignite, whereas, tile, which is what we've decided to do to this house, is exchange it for a concrete tile.

So we're ripping off all the old asphalt shingles, putting on concrete tile to so that if embers do blow and land on the roof, concrete doesn't catch fire.

Yeah.

You were saying something about windows.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

What is the protection with these windows.

So ideally so they have single pane windows which is historically that's what we've done.

And I have to interrupt you because that is a big regret that we didn't get on with the double pane windows, because since the fire came from this direction, we had a lot of ash and soot get through these windows on the inside of the house.

And so, if we had had double pane windows, I think we would have helped a lot in much better shape.

So that's one of the first things we're going to do.

Yeah.

So the idea what we're doing is upgrading this to a dual pane window, also metal framed for fire prevention, or fire, you know, helping to prevent fires.

But also the dual pane windows.

Now they interlock.

So they have an interlocking system.

So they're much more efficient.

They have to meet, title 24 code, which is like an energy code.

So now the windows, the new one is that we're going to install for them are going to be, a channel where they interlock to prevent dust, dirt, smoke from getting in as much as well as dual pane, which helps with the heat.

And one of the things that I pointed out, as I said, this is great.

You have your soffits boxed in.

You have, you know, metal framed windows.

I said, what about this, guys?

It's a beautiful, beautiful design.

It looks amazing.

I think you mentioned it's pine, Michael.

Fires, typically when they're on the ground or bushes, the heat rises.

So it's usually one of the first places, either embers on the roof or the heat rising because it rises and it starts to catch fire underneath the eaves.

And with their patio cover, they have a beautiful wood, but it's wood is very, flammable, obviously.

So what we're doing, what we talked about is replacing this with something very similar to what they have on their house, which is the fiber cement.

That's the idea of replacing this wood with a similar, fiber cement board to still have a similar look.

But, you're losing your beloved pine.

Yes, yes, it's gorgeous, but Chris assures me there's, a look alike, that fits the categories you're talking about that's also tongue and groove, and it'll work just fine.

Yeah, you got other things going on as well here.

Yes.

And so I wanted to mention that, as we step around to the back, that, we have a 120ft square foot, shed here, obviously still standing.

And part of the reason is, even though the fire encroach just a few feet away, I did upgrade to the, cement composite again.

And so, that was a factor.

It was not cheap, but it was a smart thing to do.

We are walking on to the south side of the house now.

And I wanted to point out that we still have wood doors, on these storage units where we have wheelbarrow, lawnmowers and various things, nothing of value, really.

But Chris looked at that and said, no.

And so he has a better idea, and it's along the same lines is again, going back to class A fire rated on the exterior.

So wood is obviously not Plas, I fear.

Right.

So what we decided to do is something very similar to what's on the house and what's on the eaves that we're going to put on the eaves, which is also a fiber cement.

So, there's different brands where you can buy the siding and it comes in pieces.

So what we're going to do is basically kind of rebuild this look, which is what the homeowners wanted.

They said we want to keep kind of the style and the theme that we have.

And I said, no problem, we'll figure it out.

So we're going to build it, rebuild these by hand out of the fiber cement.

So it's therefore becomes classifier rated as well.

I know the billion dollar question everybody's going to ask and say, Dave, why didn't you ask the contractor how much all of this is going to cost.

So not to have to give the exact price tag.

But listen, this stuff isn't cheap.

Let's be honest.

Yeah.

With that said, often it can be these days a necessity in these wildfire areas.

What kind of dent is it going to take in a person's wallet to do all this, home resiliency stuff?

It's a great question, and it really depends.

There's there's a few factors, and I'll get somewhat to your answer.

But first I want to preface it.

So it depends on how big your house is.

Obviously, you know, 12 600ft versus 3 or 4000ft.

It also depends on what you've already done for them.

You know, being fire experts, you know, and studying the field.

They've already done a lot of the work.

So, but it can go anywhere from 60 grand, to really do a full exterior, up upwards from there.

So depending on what are you do you know, the main things that I usually tell customers is to box in their eaves, either with stucco or a fiber cement siding.

Get rid of any wood at the base.

Same thing with patio covers.

Things like that.

The roof, the windows and doors, which we haven't talked about yet, but also replacing wood doors with metal doors.

And before we get to the doors, I've heard it can cost sometimes in the hundreds of thousands of dollars.

Is that true?

It can cost a lot.

I've got, there's, you know, I've got, multiple customers, and some of them can go up to a couple hundred thousand.

Talked about the doors.

Yeah.

So, the doors they have are, wood doors, which is kind of standard, you know, especially inter doors and a lot of, side doors.

Garage doors are usually, made of wood.

And it's not much of a price difference.

That's one of the lower price tags.

It's the roofing and the whole exterior that gets expensive.

But.

So, when you when you're looking at a door, you know, you can spend, 150, $200 for a side, entry door, whereas you could go with metal for around the same price to 250, you can get a metal, insulated or non insulated door.

Metal doesn't melt in a fire, typically not so, Chris, let me ask you a question.

You, outlined a number of steps that people could take.

It might be a big goal financially.

Can you take at one turn.

And so, if, some people can only afford to do a little bit at a time, what is the number one or number one and two priority?

It's a great question.

Yeah.

Because resiliency.

Yeah I have a customer actually just up the street.

That same thing.

They called me out because a lot of people are very aware right now.

The awareness of fire impact.

And they didn't have a huge budget, you know, so that's it's a great question.

They said, basically what you ask, what can we do that's not going to break the budget?

Like what can we do for under 100,000?

It's going to help.

Luckily they do have stucco on their house now.

So, you know, I said, we'll keep the stucco.

We don't have to do anything to that.

But they did have a wood fence.

They had a patio, a wooden patio.

And so the few things that can be really inexpensive, which are very helpful, one of which is you kind of mentioned is a soffit vent.

So a lot of older, homes have soffit vents up in the top of the wall below the eave.

And most of those vents are very big holes, for embers to be able to come in.

Now, they've created, soft events that you can replace them with, and they're, tiny.

I think they're eighth inch, maybe smaller.

But they've got some that will prevent and they've got louvers on them.

So it's a fairly inexpensive.

They're a couple hundred bucks each plus labor to take it out and put it back in and seal it.

But, so that's what I recommended for this.

Another customer was, hey, let's replace all your soft events first.

So nothing, because as an ember gets in the attic.

Guess what I mean?

You're pretty much done.

Because once the attic catches on fire, that's.

It's it's game over.

And there's also another thing, in addition to replacing soffits, which is fairly inexpensive, if you have a patio cover that's wood, and you don't want to go through the expense of ripping the whole thing down and rebuilding it, there's products out there that are a class A fire rated.

It's kind of like a paint, but it's a coating and there's a few different brands out there.

But, it does have a class AA fire rating and you can put it on top.

So it's almost like putting an epoxy over your wood so it helps to seal it and prevent.

It's not a foolproof measure, but some owners that don't have the but it's a great alternative.

I was going to mention too, if you are able to go all in, your insurance will typically give you a discount.

They have certain qualifications, and we asked about that.

What is what is it that you need to do in order to get a discount and these days, perhaps even get insurance, right.

We we really need to do those kind of things.

Fire resiliency is a layered approach.

And so start somewhere.

Everything you do will improve your odds in the next fire.

And there's always more that can be done.

And I would say work with your neighbors.

Help everybody around, you know that what the dangers are and what the mitigations that you can do are as well, the United States Green Building Council, California, is trying to help everyone be more informed about those dangers and mitigations.

Ben Stapleton is the executive director of US, GBK California.

During our tour out here in Altadena, we met with them so we could share more of what their organization is trying to do to safeguard the public here in the Golden State and throughout the nation.

And Ben has a vested interest.

You could say he's a SoCal native, lives in Pasadena, the city bordering Altadena, and he has high trees now.

Fire damage, mountains and white to these now charred hills for years.

Fortunately, he was just far enough out of harm's way about a mile or so to escape the devastation that thousands of Altadena neighbors succumbed to during the eating fire.

So for Ben, USBc is more than just a career.

This is personal.

My favorite hiking spot on a Friday afternoon.

It's actually right.

Right here and in these hills.

And that create risks.

We know that every 20 to 30 years, our wildland is used to burning.

Right?

But historically, that's our trees develop, that's our scrubs develop.

That's, how our ecosystem has been built over time.

But we haven't built our homes to to do that.

And how can we better design our homes and our communities to withstand those moments where we have high winds and we know that fire is going to come again?

They don't have to have this kind of devastation.

The good news is we have a lot of science and a lot of research.

Medina.

What can be done to to better design our homes and better maintain our homes?

And it's not just our homes.

It's our landscape, which plays a huge role, in, our ability to withstand fire and resist wildfire.

There's a lot of debate happening right now about that landscape.

It's closest to home, what we call zone zero and that 0 to 5ft from the home.

I'm a, you know, I'm a green building guy.

I believe in having, you know, lots of plants and having that biodiversity.

LA County Supervisor Horvath put together a blue ribbon commission of sustainability and resilience leaders here across the city.

We're advising the county on things that they should look at.

As we look to rebuild and recover from this disaster.

And so zone zero, which is that area 0 to 5ft from the home, really, the science says we shouldn't have anything that's combustible.

And so, so that includes in, in mulch, that includes plant life.

And we've been having a lot of debate over, what do we do with that zone?

We don't want to have a bunch of concrete that's going to increase heat, that's going to prevent groundwater infiltration.

And so we're talking a lot about how do we make sure that we're getting, you know, gravel or other things are being more nature based, are going to allow watering in the ground and reduce heat impacts the same time.

What we do from that 5 to 30ft, which we call sort of the next zone, zone one from the home, it's critically important.

And I think there's a huge opportunity for education around how to design and maintain landscape to reduce fire risk.

It can be more defensive, right?

And at the end of the day.

So, those are a lot of the things that that we're looking at right now.

There's things that we want to make sure we're putting requirements in place where they're needed.

But we also want to look at where can we really provide education, at the the U.S. Green Building Council in California.

We're huge believers in education.

So big part of what we do, and that's really how you create the cultural change.

And when we look at communities where they've been able to better withstand fire, it's because, people are more aware of these things to do to, you know, reduce dried vegetation around their homes, making sure their plants are well irrigated, making sure they don't have susceptible parts of their structure.

And if your neighbor's got those things going on, that's also exposing you right to risk.

So if we can create that cultural change where people are aware and they have the knowledge and they talk to each other and make sure that they're taking some ownership over their communities, that can help reduce some of these risks for future areas.

We were getting questions constantly from folks were like, hey, I want to go about this the right way.

A we need to make sure people have a resilient home, that they can feel safe and feel comfortable in that and be I think people are aware of this is an opportunity to do something perhaps a little bit better, that can reduce my energy costs.

It can be healthier for my family and be built with better materials.

And so people are looking for that guidance.

So we really launched that rebuilding guide to make sure that it was accessible, but comprehensive.

And then the next thing we were hearing from people, which I think is a big concern for all of us, is, you know, how do I keep my costs down, you know, how do I procure sustainable materials, resilient materials?

You know, we're going to see a big demand for.

Great.

So they're going to go in these attics to keep embers from coming in.

And so we quickly we're looking for a partner to do a group purchasing platform with, we're actually launching that this week.

We're focused and get into a group purchase of it could be anything.

Could be double pane windows.

It could be roofing material.

It could be a cistern.

And that will allow folks hopefully reduce those costs to have the right materials they need and not be overwhelmed.

And often knowing the simplest things can help folks not get so overwhelmed.

If a fire is looming.

Things like simply knowing where your gas shut off is, or where your water shut off is, or where all your sets of keys are to lock and unlock the basement, or the attic, or all the outside gates.

Anything.

Even the simplest of measures to help residents flee the scene if warranted.

To escape danger.

We can rebuild and we can rebuild better.

It's going to take a community effort.

We need to not just think about our own properties and and how to make those safer, but think about rebuilding at a community scale.

So if my neighbor rebuilds, rebuilds, and his property is, has good, defensible space, and so does mine.

And the neighbor on the other side and the people across the road will make us safer all together.

Thank you.

U.S. Green Building Council, California, and all the residents of this great Altadena, California community for your help with this report.

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I am David Nazar host of Sustaining US.

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