Why Some Houses Burn and Others Escape Untouched in California Fires

The deadly fires ravaging Los Angeles this week have displaced thousands and left many questioning how some homes—on streets otherwise turned to rubble—escaped unscathed.

Much of it comes down to pure luck, experts say, but there are ways to give your home a significantly better shot at surviving a wildfire.

Harry Statter, founder and CEO of Frontline Wildfire Defense, told the Daily Beast on Friday that “preparation and mitigation” can determine whether one’s home survives a wildfire.

Specifically, he says houses that remain standing often have Class A-rated roofs, ember-resistant vents, and double-paned windows. It’s not just the house itself, however. He added that homeowners in fire-prone areas should avoid having highly flammable vegetation—like juniper and eucalyptus trees—in their yards to increase their chances of their home surviving.

“While wildfire outcomes can sometimes appear random, they are often the result of specific factors, including the structure itself, its surroundings, and active defense strategies,” he said.

Studies back up Statter’s point. One completed in 2019 by the California ecologist Alexandra Syphard found that multi-paned windows reduced the risk of the home burning to the ground by an eye-popping 26 percent. An independent study in 2022 discovered that the “hardening” of one’s home and clearing nearby spaces of brush reduces the chance of destruction from 40 percent to 20 percent.

It was perhaps these measures that saved a home in Pacific Palisades—among the most devastated areas—which escaped the flames virtually untouched.

“No words really—just a horror show,” wrote its architect, Greg Chasen. “Some of the design choices we made here helped. But we were also very lucky.”

Chasen attributed the home’s survival to having a solid concrete perimeter, tempered glass windows, and because it had no vents or eaves.

“Solid concrete perimeter wall probably saved us there,” he said in one comment, referring to a car left in the neighbor’s driveway that surely exploded.

Every other home on Iliff Street—where nearly all homes are valued well into the millions—was destroyed entirely, NBC Los Angeles reported.

The home’s owner, Chris, told the local news station: “I’m kind of in shock and I just feel terrible for the neighbors. We’re very lucky that the house survived.”

Building-resilience expert Aris Papadopoulos, of Florida International University, told the Daily Beast that the inside of a home is like a “fuel tank” that needs to be protected. If hot embers make it inside, the structure—which is likely filled with clothes, furniture, and carpet—is a sure goner, he said.

High winds can deliver those hot embers well before a wildfire’s flames arrive, making it all the more important to build homes with a fire-proof outer shell, Papadopoulos said. Those embers alone can burn your house to the ground.

Papadopoulos summed up his advice: “Install fire-rated and non-combustible siding, roofing, windows, doors, vents, decks, and fences while ensuring a defensive, non-flammable space within at least the first 30-foot perimeter of the house.”

These measures, of course, are merely to help a home’s odds of surviving a fire. As many have learned in California in recent years, however, sometimes all the fire-proofing in the world is not quite enough.

Kyle Ferris, a fire behavior analyst with the Mountain Incident Command Team, told the Los Angeles Times in November that whether houses survive “truly is random.”

That interview came after the Mountain fire burned nearly 20,000 acres in Ventura County and destroyed 243 structures. Ken McWaid’s home was among those destroyed, despite him telling the Times he did everything he could to prepare.

“We were always thinking fire,” he told the Times. “You see these people and they go, ‘Why do they live in the brush?’ Well, you know, all of that was dirt. It was all cleared.”

As he spotted the embers falling on his home last fall, however, he knew it was not going to make it.

“As I was backing out, then I could see it,” McWaid said, recalling the moment he and his wife evacuated by car. “I knew it was done.”