This past Tuesday I had the exciting experience of attending the ribbon-cutting for the Dixon Trail community by KB Home in Escondido, California (https://lnkd.in/gwHeBbN9). This is the world’s first Wildfire-Resilient Neighborhood. All 64 homes follow Institute for Business and Home Safety (https://IBHS.org) guidelines to prevent structures from catching fire. IBHS CEO Roy Wright and Wildfire Division Director Michele Steinberg of the National Fire Protection Association were among the speakers highlighting the significance of this new development.
As the risks of urban conflagration increase throughout the West, more communities need to adopt practices like these, both in new construction like Dixon Trail, and in retrofits, as are being piloted in half a dozen other communities across California, as described at Tuesday’s event by J. Lopez.
Much of the credit for the exceptional speed of implementation of Dixon Trail goes to the leaders of KB Home and the City of Escondido. KB’s senior representatives Steve Ruffner and Jacob Atalla saw a demonstration of fire-resistant construction at a conference last summer and decided to convert an existing development where grading had already begun. KB Home partnered with Escondido's Mayor Dane M White, City Council, Fire Department and other staff to expedite permitting.
The importance and timeliness of these decisions was demonstrated by the LA wildfires earlier this year. As has been seen repeatedly in urban fires in California, Canada, Australia and elsewhere, entire neighborhoods are only as fire safe as their weakest link. If a single unprotected home catches fire, all of its neighbors are then at risk from ignition by embers. That’s why neighborhood-scale fire prevention like this is so critical.
For these innovations to be more widely replicated, incentives will need to be provided, by the insurance industry through lower rates and greater policy access for homeowners, and by cities through flexibility in zoning for developers and home builders. The latter could include expedited permitting, reduced fees, zoning adjustments and floor area ratio increases.
Progress on climate change is too slow to prevent urban wildfires from becoming more common. Pathbreaking developments like Dixon Trail need to become the standard for new construction, and the model for retrofits, throughout the West.
