Lauren Sommer is a correspondent for NPR's climate desk, where she covers scientists on the frontlines of documenting the warming climate and how that science is — and isn't — being used by communities to prepare for increasing disasters.
Local and national news, NPR, things to do, food recommendations and guides to Los Angeles, Orange County and the Inland EmpireLAist is part of Southern California Public Radio, a member-supported public media network. For the latest national news from NPR and our live radio broadcast, visitMany homes are destroyed in wildfires due to wind-driven embers that get caught in the landscaping. California is now drafting rules that would limit vegetation within five feet of a house.
With the costs of wildfires skyrocketing, both in human toll and dollars, California's regulators say communities need to do all they can to reduce the dangers. The upcoming rules could have much broader impacts, since many other Western states have followed California's lead on wildfire policy.On a large empty airfield in Sacramento, firefighters light two small buildings on fire.
Two small spot fires spark in the mulch, simulating a typical ignition in large wildfires where high winds carry embers far ahead of the fire. "Wildfire adaptation is going to take a different aesthetic," says Anne Cope, chief engineer at the Insurance Institute for Business & Home Safety."We need to take our beautiful landscaping and our flowers that we enjoy so much as humans and we need to move that away from the house where we can see it from the window and still enjoy our gardens, just not right up next to the structure.
"We've been working with builders and industry to flip-flop the idea: put the walkway right next to the home and put the plants on the other side of the walkway so now you've got that five feet of distance," Berlant says.
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