Your point is one of the lessons that I think we can take awy from this horrible disaster. There is no value gained from homes and privately-held property being torched. But one thing that I hope the general public takes away from this is that, perhaps, building homes in the path of terrain that MUST cyclically burn in order for it to sustain itself, is an INCREDIBLE error of human judgement. And it is not too great a leap to say that we shouldn’t build in the middle of OTHER natural ecologies. Development can occur IN UNION with nature, not IN PLACE of nature.

The Los Angeles chapter of Architecture for Humanity is organizing an event to host this kind of discussion next Saturday, Nov. 3rd. Please visit our site www,afhla.org for more details, and join our email list for updates on these upcoming events. Thanks for listening!

i know it sounds insensitive and i definitely do not mean it as such, but do you think that our fire/forest management (i.e. not letting *natural* wild fires burn – for fear of timber value and real estate loss) is partially responsible here (duff/underbrush build up and then when a fire finally does happen it has lots of fuel, more than it would if they happened annually)? and really with all the water transport that supporting desert communities requires it may be that there is a “greener” solution than rebuilding a city that shouldn’t really exist in the first place, at least not in its current incarnation…

solution (i hope somebody is listening):

rebuild with fire proof materials – materials that are appropriate to the region (cob, adobe, cement/concrete – not wood shipped from somewhere else) and when rebuilding pay special attention to rainwater catchment systems, composting toilets, greywater reuse, native landscaping/vegetation and low water usage in general…

check out the living building challenge – it’s many great examples of how a building ought to be re/built…