Keep mmikeinsantarosa and his family in your thoughts

[mmikeinsantarosa]

I think one of the problem is that mobile communication is one of the first to drop during fires, SMS won't work if there's no cell reception.

Correct. I recall hearing 70+ cell towers went down during this event. They either just lost power or burnt. Cell reception was spotty. For most of Tuesday there was an area at my mom's in her driveway about 20' x 20' where we could make calls. Inside the house and most areas outside were dead.

[MX-16_fan]

@BitJam:

This may be wildly OT but there once was an effort to make a non-centralized peer-to-peer network that would be more robust in these situations. I don't know what came if it. I imagine it met stiff resistance from companies that profit from the centralization.

Like some kind of https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mesh_networking system? Greetings, Joe

[xali]

as far as i know , the only thing to help you communicate in such situations, is amateur radio. that's why i asked timkb4cq the other time if due to weather crisis , people occupied the frequencies to find each other and created a messy situation.

one question, why do you people in usa build your houses with such materials? why not stone or bricks or cement or something else? are these expensive there as i hear? is there another reason?

[Adrian]

why do you people in usa build your houses with such materials? why not stone or bricks or cement or something else? are these expensive there as i hear? is there another reason?

It's probably a matter of both cost and culture -- we didn't learn from the story with 3 little piggies... the second, wood house, was still blown away.

[cyrilus31]

From what I know tradition and thereby cost and building time make that wooden houses are so "popular" in the US. In France thanks to the 3 little piggies, people have tendancy to think that wooden house are much less reliable (about 10% of new built houses, the vast majority are made of brick).

In case of violent wildfire, I'm not sure you don't have to build from scratch even in a brick house except if you build that (google translate is your friend)

[Stevo]

The devastated Coffey Park area was considered not to be in a wildfire hazard zone, and the homes were not subject to regulations that other California homes in danger zones are required to follow to be fire resistant, such as fire resistant roofing or screened attic vents. The regulations are sure to be revised after this disaster. The fires spread via embers flying in the high winds and lodging in eaves, roofs, etc. Experts think most of the homes ignited through embers flying into attics through unscreened attic vents and starting fires in there, so even brick or concrete buildings would have been collapsed, burned-out shells...and even modern, fire-resistant buildings such as hospitals and big-box stores built of cinder block still were destroyed in Santa Rosa, so fire researchers have their work cut out for them.

As for why wood-frame houses, there are several reasons besides money and ease of construction:

They are more earthquake resistant overall than concrete or masonry structures, which is very important in this part of California, as long as they are securely bolted to the foundation.

The climate is generally mild, so the homes don't have to withstand bitterly cold winters, wild hurricane-force winds, or have basements like in most other parts of the US. Homeowners in the Midwest have to think about being prepared for tornadoes, for example.

[xali]

i see... thanks for the replies.
i asked because every time i see in the news that a disaster of some kind, hurricanes,fires etc, hits the usa , nothing remains... everything seems totally collapsed. So , i thought that it must be the houses , the way they are constructed...

[Stevo]

A lot of the homes destroyed in Hurricane Andrew were indeed of rather shoddy wood-frame construction, while solidly-built concrete structures survived. Of course, we saw the same sort of thing happen recently in the Caribbean this year, too.

[richb]

I live in upstate New York, not far from the Canadian Border. The vast majority of houses are wood frame, but not surprisingly my father who was an Italian immigrant and mason built a brick house. I think it is somewhat cultural.
During my first visit to Canada as a boy I was taken aback by the almost universal masonry houses, brick mostly. Eighty miles away from my home the atmosphere was completely different largely due o the structures. Different culture, different concept of what the home and heath should be encased in. That is my uninformed contribution to the reason.

[Jerry3904]

Ha! My house is made of foam with a concrete core--it would stand after a wild fire, but it would be super ugly.