By architect Ben Wollen
The world has all gone topsy-turvy. I know that might seem pretty obvious to most of us who can’t help but to follow the news or happen to click on the wrong link on our socials. I’m mostly referring to the bushfires impacting Los Angeles during what is actually our fire season!
Some of the images coming out of the fires there are shocking! We thought we were in a housing crisis. Can you imagine the impact these fires will have on the Los Angeles area which was already grappling with a housing crisis. 12,000 structures lost, meaning not just homes lost but places of work, worship and education that all need to be rebuilt. I daresay there’s not a spare 12,000 builders with their hammers at the ready to jump straight in either, especially with all the anti-immigration sentiment that Trump is bringing into office.
It really goes to show how important it is to build back better. I couldn’t help but notice that with all the before-and-after images of the LA fires, many of the houses had asphalt shingles for their roofing. Yes, the same substance that we stick roads together with, made from the residue leftover from the processing of crude oil. I’m no genius, but I reckon a few more houses would have survived if they had a better roof covering than something made from crude oil!
Back in 2008, California did implement new building codes for wildfire-prone areas, but unfortunately many areas that burnt in the recent fires weren’t within these designated areas and many of them already had homes built prior to the code coming into effect. Not to blow the trumpet of our bushfire regulations here in NSW, but I tried to read through some of the fire code in California and maybe I was lost in translation, but it didn’t seem like very plain English to me and there weren’t any diagrams available explaining what the so-called ordinances were all about.
We designers (whether we are from the US, Australia or anywhere else for that matter) think in drawings better than we do words. In fact, when you want to describe a building element, words just don’t work. That’s why we invented a whole visual language around the construction of buildings. Can you imagine giving a builder a bunch of descriptive words to show them what you want for your home?! Never mind all the non-English speaking workers who need to somehow interpret the words. What’s the old saying? “A picture is worth a thousand words.”
We here in Oz still can’t sit on our hands. Whilst many of the new homes being built in and around our urban/wildland fringe are being built to current building codes, there are also thousands of homes in these areas that were built before the current codes.
We definitely don’t need any more pressure put on our housing at the moment. Difficult enough to be meeting the Federal Government’s housing targets of 1.2 million homes in five years.
According to the latest ABS information, dwelling approvals are around 30% lower than what they need to be to reach this target. Throw a bushfire tragedy like LA’s in there and we’ll be going backwards fast. We also need to take note that once these fires make it into the areas away from the fringes, and given the “wrong” conditions, our firefighters will be as pushed as the LA firefighters.
And so, even though I’m really over the seemingly constant Summer La Niña systems bringing insane humidity and its resultant mould on all things leather and timber, we should be counting our lucky stars in our little neck of the woods. I look up to the escarpment and there has been some incredible growth in the forests that surround us. It is only a matter of time before those conditions change and the La Niña changes to El Niño. All that lovely lush green bush then becomes a scary premise for a Hollywood blockbuster (no pun intended).
Read more
Fire Safety and Property: What every Illawarra buyer should know;
