<story><title>PG&amp;E stock plunged 32% after it disclosed a possible link to California’s fire</title><url>https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2018-11-14/pg-e-plunges-in-early-trading-amid-wildfire-destruction</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>brownbat</author><text>99PI&amp;#x27;s coverage of forest fire policy and design was really provocative:&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;99percentinvisible.org&amp;#x2F;episode&amp;#x2F;built-to-burn&amp;#x2F;&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;99percentinvisible.org&amp;#x2F;episode&amp;#x2F;built-to-burn&amp;#x2F;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;p&gt;1. Our entire approach to fighting forest fires may just be making them worse.&lt;p&gt;2. Smart and simple design decisions can save houses.&lt;p&gt;A house can be thirty feet from an entire forest on fire and never burn down.&lt;p&gt;We learned this through hardcore experiments in Canada where they built homes to test and lit forests on fire nearby.&lt;p&gt;One of the immediate takeaways was to change roofing materials to resist embers, but there are other options for materials and landscaping that could make homes basically impervious.&lt;p&gt;The problem is probabilities. Fires are common, constant. They are exceedingly rare in any one location though. So fire resistant design is no one&amp;#x27;s urgent problem, fires are always something that seems like it will happen to somebody else.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>nixpulvis</author><text>My best friend in high school lost his house to a fire in the mountains of CO. The house was made out of clays and other highly fire resistant materials, to the point it was designated the safe house for the fire crew of the area... when the four mile canyon fire swept through it was so hot it even melted all the metals like copper and steel. There was nothing left.&lt;p&gt;I&amp;#x27;m sure there are lots of ways to build houses to resist fire more, and we should be doing that, but &amp;quot;basically impervious&amp;quot; is an overstatement.</text></comment>
<story><title>PG&amp;E stock plunged 32% after it disclosed a possible link to California’s fire</title><url>https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2018-11-14/pg-e-plunges-in-early-trading-amid-wildfire-destruction</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>brownbat</author><text>99PI&amp;#x27;s coverage of forest fire policy and design was really provocative:&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;99percentinvisible.org&amp;#x2F;episode&amp;#x2F;built-to-burn&amp;#x2F;&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;99percentinvisible.org&amp;#x2F;episode&amp;#x2F;built-to-burn&amp;#x2F;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;p&gt;1. Our entire approach to fighting forest fires may just be making them worse.&lt;p&gt;2. Smart and simple design decisions can save houses.&lt;p&gt;A house can be thirty feet from an entire forest on fire and never burn down.&lt;p&gt;We learned this through hardcore experiments in Canada where they built homes to test and lit forests on fire nearby.&lt;p&gt;One of the immediate takeaways was to change roofing materials to resist embers, but there are other options for materials and landscaping that could make homes basically impervious.&lt;p&gt;The problem is probabilities. Fires are common, constant. They are exceedingly rare in any one location though. So fire resistant design is no one&amp;#x27;s urgent problem, fires are always something that seems like it will happen to somebody else.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>dbcurtis</author><text>&amp;gt; A house can be thirty feet from an entire forest on fire and never burn down.&lt;p&gt;In zero wind. The fires in Santa Rosa were driven by 60 mph (100 kph) winds. Even 30 mph winds will pick up the top 15 meters of a burning Ponderosa Pine and carry it 400 meters away and start a new fire.&lt;p&gt;After the Santa Rosa fires I saw newspaper photos of melted barbeque grills. A fire hot enough to melt cast iron is going to light or melt any roofing material I can think of.</text></comment>