Rebuilding Malibu with fire-safe design, one home at a time
One Malibu homeowner is determined to make her house "extra strong" as she rebuilds from the Palisades Fire – the second wildfire to destroy her family's property.
Shelley Pederson-Cox said the Malibu property has been in her family for four generations, and it already burned to the ground once before, in the 1993 Old Topanga wildfire.
"That was my house of sticks, the next house was my house of whatever, stronger, this is going to be my house of extra-strong everything," Pederson-Cox said.
Civil engineer Joe Demers is looking at how to rebuild the home, this time to withstand potential fire threats. He works with Alpha Structural, a Southern California-based company specializing in concrete repair.
"We look at foundations of houses that are burned down, and we assess what can be, what can be saved, what can be reused, and what needs to be replaced," Demers said.
He pointed out that the steel inside the concrete foundation can expand because of the fire, causing it to crack inside. Testing showed parts of the concrete deep foundation were still solid and can be reused in the construction of the home.
"If they can reuse what's here, then they'll save a lot of money," Demers said, noting that deep pile foundation systems can cost hundreds of thousands of dollars.
"There's also ventilation. You can have screens on your vents that protect you from embers coming in the house. There are things you can do to wood to make it more fire resistant, and there are materials other than wood," he said.
It's fire-safe design choices, along with resilient foundations that experts say every homeowner should consider in California's growing wildfire risk.
Pederson-Cox said she does not want to have to rebuild again. "Every time this happens, we learn more about how to live in this area. This Mother Earth is going to take back whatever… whether it's landslides or fires or earthquakes. It's, you know, we really are just guests here," she said.
