To the editor: So, David Steiner’s concrete house is the sole survivor in a destroyed Malibu neighborhood. I discover that predictable, however apparently insurance coverage firms don’t.
My house is a completely concrete construction with a dirt-over-concrete roof. Lately our insurance coverage was canceled as a result of we’re in a fireplace zone. True, however they didn’t cancel our neighbor’s late-Nineteen Fifties wood-frame house in the identical zone.
We hear that insurers in California are mandated to contemplate a house’s fire-resistant components. It appears you get credit score for screening vents however punished for constructing an primarily fireproof construction.
Sure, California’s pure disasters make it very arduous for insurers. What would it not take to wake them up and get them to really take a look at the fire-related components of a home fairly than, as they do now, put houses into classes and deny those who fail to slot in a type of packing containers?
Ann Cottrell, San Diego
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To the editor: Listed below are two simple details: First, there’ll all the time be wildfires in California, and second, wooden burns.
When folks rebuild their houses this time, will they keep away from the usage of wooden and different combustibles? Unlikely except they’re pressured.
However it might occur very simply. Native and state ordinances may be the beginning — that will be the easiest way if politics didn’t hold all the pieces tied up in courtroom till it was too late and all of the tinder was in place for the following fireplace.
The more than likely push to finish the usage of combustibles will come from the insurance coverage trade. By providing deep reductions or just refusing to insure, firms can save not solely our rebuilding communities, but additionally our forests. They’ll additionally save themselves from chapter.
Yet one more factor: If you have already got a wooden home in a fire-prone space, stucco it. That’s what saved my Altadena house from the firestorm that leveled my neighborhood.
Steve Huffsteter, Altadena
