Instapundit links to a report in the online journal PhysOrg reporting findings of a study of building damage caused by wildfires in California. They sought to learn the factors that lessened fire damage. These included "hardening" of buildings, creation of a vegetation-free perimeter space around homes, and spacing between buildings.
One of the studied fires was the 2018 Camp fire, in which the DrsC were absent participants. In 2018 we still owned a home in CA that we'd built in 1987 on 11+ acres of hilly former pasture within the fire perimeter.
When we built the house in '87 we were in the habit of being gone summers, traveling in our RV. We knew the house would stand untended and planned accordingly to make it fire-resistant. Our planning paid off. All we lost was landscaping and our gate which firefighters had to break through to fight the fire.
Our house incorporated hardening (tile roof, stucco exterior, concrete perimeter walkway), had no vegetation up against the house, was surrounded by plowed firebreaks, and was far from other structures. Our land was mostly left in wild grasses, which don't burn as hot or as long as shrubs or trees.
Politics, not fire danger, was the reason we sold that home and moved our winter base out of CA.
