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Comment by marze | Hacker News Reader

One would certainly hope that reconstruction would involve houses with concrete exteriors, or masonry. It would be silly to build a bunch of wood houses. Especially for luxury homes, a concrete shell should only add 1% to the overall cost. And technology exists to build hurricane-proof houses.

Shouldn't this be mandated, if a "natural disaster" destroys a home, to not replace it with a similarly vulnerable structure?

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California has a more stringent wildlands fire building code. Not sure if they'd apply it to this area too. I've also heard that some insurances have declined fire coverage or charged very high premiums to homes not meeting their material requirements.

Most of the houses are already stucco which is very fire resistant. The problem is more the attic, roofs, and windows that might break.

i have been wondering about this. how well do concrete and other less flammable materials actually help in a fire storm like this? wouldn't much of the house still get damaged enough that you may well have to rebuild anyways? or is the difference enough to keep, say, 50% of the houses in a reusable state as opposed to losing all of them?

I've been wondering how fire manages to damage a stucco/stone house in the first place, especially in some of the cases where there wasn't much vegetation around. The scale of the fire must be quite immense and counterintuitive to get the outcome seen on news photos/footage.

I'm speculating, but it could be the wooden eves, window frames, and wooden doors that allow the fire to get a foothold. If the roof is vented, it may suck in burning embers.

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