Victim Of Napa County Atlas Fire Takes Home Hardening To Another Level
NAPA (KPIX) -- As people continue to rebuild in fire-prone areas like Napa and Sonoma Counties, one homeowner is taking the concept of "home hardening" to a whole new level.
Of the 12 homes on one stretch of Westgate Drive in Napa, ten burned down in the 2017 Atlas Fire, and two people died. But it wasn't the first close call that Dr. David Rochelle has had with fire.
"Three, so far. One got me," he said. On the night the Atlas Fire broke out, La Rochelle had just 5 minutes to abandon his home before it burned to the ground.
"I was just across the street there when the whole area was burning. It just reminded me of Vietnam," he said. "And you've got to do something to protect yourself."
So he's rebuilding his house to be virtually impervious to fire. The entire structure of the 9,000 square-foot home will be concrete and steel beams, with the only combustible material being cabinets or furnishings, and even those will be protected by an interior sprinkler system. Outside, other sprinklers will spray a curtain of water to protect windows from super-heated air, and the water is supplied by the outdoor swimming pool and a 7,000-gallon cistern located in the basement garage.
"We decided that we wanted to build houses that just wouldn't burn down," said David Hosking, of Gateway Builders, the general contractor handling the project. The Santa Rosa company has decided to build exclusively with non-combustible materials.
"It just didn't make sense to put something back up that, as you're looking at it go up, you can visualize it burning down," he said.
When it's finished, the concrete home will be nearly identical to its former, wood-framed look. But with lumber quadrupling in price since 2017, concrete construction is now equal in cost, and Hosking thinks that fact alone, will convince insurance companies to force a change.
"In the end, insurance companies have to think about their bottom line," he said. "If they realize that the cost of building was the same and that scenario of burning down won't happen again, I think they would probably demand that every house gets rebuilt in a non-combustible format."
Since 2017, 1,329 homes in Napa County have been destroyed by various wildfires. But only about 400 owners have filed for construction permits. Many are waiting to rebuild, but eventually, the decision about how to build may be made for them.