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> Your comment is like saying no one should bother building basements in tornado country because a strong F5 will kill you anyway. The vast majority of tornadoes aren’t strong F5s so taking some precautions absolutely will save lives and property.

No, my comment is like saying clearing 30 feet around your house is an absolute no-brainer, of course do it, but don't expect that alone to miraculously save you from a fire.

Saying this as someone who's mountain cabin survived the Detweiler fire, largely because of vegetation control.

>No, my comment is like saying clearing 30 feet around your house is an absolute no-brainer, of course do it

Ok, but that's not what you said. You just ignored it completely like you were disregarding it. If it was such a no-brainer everyone would have done that in California, which was clearly not the case and it's why we're having this discussion now.

It's like someone posting stats about seatbelts saving lives in response to tons of vehicle deaths where people weren't wearing seatbelts. Then you come along and point out that if you drive off a 500 ft cliff a seatbelt won't save your life and some of the deaths were caused by driving off of a cliff.

Either the implication is that the safety mechanism would not have helped, or you are offering a useless observation that it's not making them impervious.

> or you are offering a useless observation that it's not making them impervious.

Considering that the original post literally used the phrase "could make homes basically impervious", I don't consider this a useless observation. I found it quite informative.

>my comment is like saying clearing 30 feet around your house is an absolute no-brainer, of course do

Watch the videos coming out of the area. These people have trees touching their homes.

Quoting the original poster: > but there are other options for materials and landscaping that could make homes basically impervious > basically impervious

That (for a layman like me) can easily be interpreted as fire proofing.

It's very generous of you to suggest that the miscommunication is due to a lack of expertise on your part. I'm pretty sure it isn't, though.

> No one is claiming you can fireproof a house;

the quoted line "A house can be thirty feet from an entire forest on fire and never burn down." says exactly that.

Implicitly, that requires luck. Some houses will burn down, just not everyone.

Nothing will save a house that's close to a forest fire while not being fire-resistant, however.

I think it's a matter of interpretation. "A house can be thirty feet from an entire forest on fire and never burn down" is not equivalent to "A house thirty feet from an entire forest on fire will never burn down."

It's a bit tricky because in truth a house may be touching trees that are one fire and "will never burn down" (in the sense that it won't that time) can also be a true statement.

I think a generous interpretation is that "A house can be thirty feet from an entire forest on fire and never burn down." is meant to mean that a house thirty feet away from the forest fire likely won't while a house right next to the forest fire likely will.

It was poorly worded, but it isn't necessarily saying what you state.

You're arguing semantics in a non-cooperative way. I had to re-read your first sentence five or six times to glean the meaningful difference. It's unfortunately put you in the camp of either trying to make a moving target argument, or dismissing your peers as children - neither of which is a positive end.

Like with anything, you have to pick what the likely scenario should be and build to it. You can build a nuclear power plant to resist 40ft high swells and still get a 50ft swell and be powerless. Obviously more protected is better, but also more expensive (which makes housing less available and affordable, etc). The recurrent nature of the problem suggests to me that the code may be too lax currently, and that the solutions are non-trivial: likely major work for existing homes (from a homeowner perspective, forest management may be able to do more).

> You're arguing semantics in a non-cooperative way.

Huh, I think that's the first time I've been accused of being non-cooperative for saying what is essentially "I think perhaps how you're interpreting that statement is not how it was meant and you're talking past each other."

All I was saying is that it appears that zzzeek interpreted the original statement as "do X and Y can't happen" when I think ambiguous wording was used and that wasn't the intent, as I didn't interpret it that way.

I'm arguing semantics because I think there is a misunderstanding of people's positions because of those semantics. I understand that it got a little long into the weeds, but there was a point.

You should read it again and understand what’s behind said. If you’re missing the grammatical structure you are probably misunderstanding a huge percentage of the language people are using around you.

The word used was “can” and it means something is possible.

Your misunderstanding is quite commmon in English these days. People say things like “men are pigs” or “chickens fly” and many will interpret that as if a broad claim was made. But “all chickens fly all day long” is a totally different sentence than “chickens fly” and “chickens can fly“.

Keep tree tops 30-60 feet away from structures is certainly good advice, but the environmental extremists are virulently opposed to any efforts to permit homeowners from being able to do that sort of tree management on their own property.

Here is a page from such a group attempting to oppose a measure that would allow private citizens to cut down trees on their own land, if that land is under 300 acres in area: http://winewaterwatch.org/2018/08/kill-ab-426-allowing-road-...

How about don't build your house in the forest?

Or more accurately, don't build your house in the middle of a forest that has fire as an important part of its life cycle.

What would be an example of another kind of forest, where fire isn't an important part of the life cycle?

rainforest

Temperate broadleaf forest

That strikes me as a misleading read on AB 425. It expands the existing exempted activities which don't require a forestry management plan, like temporary road building:

https://leginfo.legislature.ca.gov/faces/billTextClient.xhtm...

The ability of "private citizens to cut down trees on their own land" doesn't turn on AB 425. The code already has specific provisions for firebreaks, and AB 425 doesn't change them one way or another:

https://codes.findlaw.com/ca/public-resources-code/prc-sect-...