--- title: How a California Home Survived 2017's Historic Wildfires description: Looking back on last year's fire season, experts have ample explanations for why flames became historically destructive in California canonical: https://time.com/5276699/the-lesson-of-how-one-california-home-survived-last-years-historic-wildfires/ author: Katy Steinmetz article:opinion: true article:content_tier: free article:published_time: 2018-06-02T16:19:25.000Z article:modified_time: 2026-10-12T09:29:26.122Z article:section: Ideas og:title: How a California Home Survived 2017's Historic Wildfires og:description: Looking back on last year's fire season, experts have ample explanations for why flames became historically destructive in California og:url: https://time.com/5276699/the-lesson-of-how-one-california-home-survived-last-years-historic-wildfires/ og:site_name: TIME og:image: https://static.time.com/v3/assets/bltea6093859af6183b/blta25db06fedec6c68/6989322586f68e64466e9560/thomas-fire-nicholas-weissman.jpg?branch=production&width=1200&quality=75&auto=webp&crop=16:9 og:image:width: 1280 og:image:height: 720 og:image:alt: Thomas-Fire-Nicholas-Weissman og:type: article twitter:card: summary_large_image twitter:title: How a California Home Survived 2017's Historic Wildfires twitter:description: Looking back on last year's fire season, experts have ample explanations for why flames became historically destructive in California twitter:image: https://static.time.com/v3/assets/bltea6093859af6183b/blta25db06fedec6c68/6989322586f68e64466e9560/thomas-fire-nicholas-weissman.jpg?branch=production&width=1200&quality=75&auto=webp&crop=16:9 ---  # The Lesson of How One California Home Survived Last Year's Historic Wildfires > Sponsored content. 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A paid TIME subscription is separate and available at time.com/subscribe-agent. ### Sources * TIME Newsletters: [time.com/newsletters](/c/time-nl-inside-2026q3/newsletters?i=43f9adad-9c42-4f82-a96f-00a4c2cc85f5&cr=time-nl-inside-2026q3-v1) ## Video: How a California Home Survived Last Year's Historic Wildfires [Watch (HLS stream): How a California Home Survived Last Year's Historic Wildfires](https://cdn.jwplayer.com/manifests/15woqi8g.m3u8) (7:10)  _Published 2018-06-02. After the Thomas Fire destroyed over 1,000 homes, filmmaker Nicholas Weissman profiles a unique approach to homebuilding with the hope that many people will take note._ by [Katy Steinmetz](https://time.com/author/katy-steinmetz/) ## Katy Steinmetz Jun 2, 2018 4:19 PM UTC After the Thomas Fire destroyed over 1,000 homes, filmmaker Nicholas Weissman profiles a unique approach to homebuilding with the hope that many people will take note. by [Katy Steinmetz](https://time.com/author/katy-steinmetz/) ## Katy Steinmetz Jun 2, 2018 4:19 PM UTC Looking back on [last year’s fire season](http://time.com/4979223/california-wildfires-only-getting-worse/), experts have ample explanations for why flames became historically destructive in California, consuming thousands of structures throughout the state. Some, like strong Santa Ana winds and a slow recovery from a long drought, are more natural forces. Others, like a growing population that has been pushing development into wild areas, are distinctly human. As one expert told TIME, for many homes in forested places, “it’s just a matter of time” before fire will arrive. John Davis and Lorrie Brown, who run an [architecture firm](https://www.dba-studio.net/) in Ojai, Calif., knew they were constructing a home in a dangerous spot when they decided to live on 27 acres in the hills of Ventura County, where the Thomas Fire destroyed more than 1,000 structures last year. But unlike many of their neighbors, the couple had a home to go back to after evacuations were over. They had [designed it with fire in mind](https://www.dba-studio.net/new-blog/): rather than a typical wooden frame, the home has bones of steel. The decking is made out of a hardwood that burns little better than concrete. Where other homes might have grass, they have gravel, with landscaping setting the home back from ground cover that carries blazes from place to place. There are even fire doors that can be pulled like barn doors to create a “hard shell” protecting the structure from hot embers. Filmmaker Nicholas Weissman profiled the project with hopes that the many people who may be rebuilding or retrofitting homes in California — particularly in areas that are part of [wildland-urban interface](http://silvis.forest.wisc.edu/maps/wui) — will take note. He lives in the same area and evacuated multiple times as flames came within a quarter mile of his own home. “Know what the place is,” Weissman says. “It’s very much a reality check that we had the worst fire season in California history last year.” And the 2018 fire season [will be here soon](https://www.predictiveservices.nifc.gov/outlooks/monthly%5Fseasonal%5Foutlook.pdf). ## Transcript [ MUSIC ] When I say we never thought it would happen I mean we'd live here long enough to see fires coming close [ BLANK_AUDIO ]. But [ UNKNOWN ] I don't think we thought it could ever happened. [ BLANK_AUDIO ]. [ MUSIC ]. I'm not sure of the exact timing but a litle [ INAUDIBLE ]. To six o'clock. We got a call from our son. He said, have you heard about the fire? At some point the glow was getting a little brighter. And when I walked around the corner of the house House I saw about a 20 foot wall of flame, basically in the backyard. And it was moving towards us so at the point came around walked in the front door and said okay we gotta leave. It was like they were the perfect points of triangulation, because it was both sides of the valley. We escape the Konigstine firestorm by minutes. Nobody looked behind. I didn't look behind. I don't think anyone else looked behind. Thousands of firefighters in Southern California are racing against the clock to prevent a massive wildfire from spreading into nearby neighborhoods. [ MUSIC ] [ MUSIC ] [ MUSIC ] I didn't really embrace the notion of designing, I was really interested in the psychology of spaces and what they used to call Man- Environment Studies and what now is more generally covered by the concept of Geography. [ MUSIC ] It's just a broad notion of how human beings interact with their environment. We know that situated where we are, fires come through the canyon every thirty years, so when we designed this house, we said okay, how can we be sustainable. Number one, the house has to survive. Because then you can amortize the embedded energy over potentially 100 years. [ MUSIC ] [ MUSIC ] When we open the house at, there was ash and kinda smoke damage every where because the ash and smoke have been sucked in because it's a pressure there for [ UNKNOWN ] between the outside which was you know 750 or 1000 degrees with the fuss on, And the inside that was maybe 150 so the smoke could have been sucked in. [ MUSIC ] As designers you get these intellectual ideas and should follow them. And you're not necessarily emotionally invested in the truth of them, it's just a kinda of an intellectual game. We knew we had to do it simply, and we were doing some things that were a little unusual. We don't have any wood in the building, it's steel studs. We were also doing things with energy. We wanted to pass a solar house. [ MUSIC ] Which means right now there's no sun comes in the house whatsoever. In the winter the sun streams through the windows cuz it's low and it's to the south. Number one, we could offset the electrical usage because we were gonna do [ UNKNOWN ]. And number two, we didn't wanna use propane because it's flammable. As incidentally it turned out to be some of the exploding tanks occured in the Thomas Fire. So we'd finished the building and we hung the fire doors, I mean basically the next day we had had them designed and fabricated ready to go. We didn't really expect to put it to the test It was the biggest surprise to us as everyone. But I think we had adopted the intellectual construct. Emotionally did I think it was every gonna burn? No. It validated everything and it was Someone was saying to us, well, you designed this house and you thought about fire in it then. The fire happened. That's the end of the cycle. Well, it is in a way. I mean, it was still an open question, until the [ UNKNOWN ] fire, as to whether what we'd done would work. Well, now we know. This particular fire worked. [ MUSIC ] In the Thomas Fire, I think it was approaching 1000 houses that burned. We're now at a point And processes civilization where we make these kind of irrational choices. I mean, I think it's very hard to defend living here. We're a very kind of intrusive species, and we have a huge number of choices, which most Creatures don't have, and supposedly thirty percent of Americans live in this zone. In other words, they back up to substantially natural landscapes. We know the ones that didn't burn. It's more an issue of well, there's a few that didn't burn and we know which those were. Are most burnt. So, it's been pretty traumatic. I think it's kind of low level post- traumatic stress. And what is more frustrating, the bigger emotion for me is that As people are starting to think about rebuilding, I think there's a sense that well we had the big fire and there's not gonna be another one for at least 35 years so we shouldn't really worry about it. [ MUSIC ] And so in the vernacular I think people are going to build the same old ship. 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