Yves here. This post provides news you can use, even if of a grim variety. It provides practical suggestions on how to bolster physical and financial protection in climate change related extreme events, including fires.
Having said that, even some of these useful suggestions do not go far enough. An N95 will reduce smoke inhalation in a fire but will not assure adequate quality air for very long. I cannot find the product on Amazon, in a separate Internet search, or in my inbox, but years ago, a reader in comments recommended a truly fierce fire hood. Clear plastic, sat on the shoulders, with canisters that could assure air supply for over an hour, IIRC an hour and a half. I dimly recall it was also rated to hold up to a pretty high temperature. Said reader always carried enough for him and his family in the back of his car on long trips (and I assume then took it into his home). Again this was years back, and the price per hood then was $169 or $189.
Readers can likely recommend additional improvements to the lists below.
Jeff Masters also includes a set of maps showing the level of exposure to various climate risks, as well as grid outage frequencies. Can anyone point to similar maps for Europe, South America, and Asia?
By Jeff Masters, Ph.D., who worked as a hurricane scientist with the NOAA Hurricane Hunters from 1986-1990. In 1995, he co-founded the Weather Underground, and served as its chief meteorologist and on its Board of Directors until it was sold to the Weather Company in 2012. Between 2005-2019, his Category 6 blog was one of the Internet’s most popular and widely quoted sources of extreme weather and climate change information. Originally published at Yale Climate Connections
Like an approaching major hurricane whose outer spiral bands are only just beginning to hit, an approaching climate change storm has begun and will soon grow to ferocious severity — a topic I discussed in detail in my previous post, When will climate change turn life in the U.S. upside down? This immense tempest is already exposing the precarious foundations upon which civilization is built — an inadequate infrastructure designed for the gentler climate of the 20th century. What should you do to prepare?
On a personal level, you should prepare for the intensifying climate change storm like you would for an approaching major hurricane. If you’re going to stay in place, know your risk, get more insurance, stock up on supplies, weatherproof your home, be ready for long power outages (if you can, get solar panels with battery backup), keep extra courses of essential medicines on hand, and get your finances in order. And if you live in a sufficiently risky place, leave.
Consider Standing Your Ground
Moving to a new place strips you from the web of social connections in your community. As journalist Madeline Ostrander has observed, such ties help people cope during emergencies: “Sense of place, community, and rootedness aren’t just poetic ideas. They are survival mechanisms,” she has written.
So before you pack your bags, first make sure you understand the expected consequences of climate change where you live now. Do those risks outweigh the cost of leaving behind friends, neighbors, family, and professional contacts?
Get Insurance
If you decide to remain where you are, it is well worth it to increase your insurance coverage, despite the fact that insurance costs are rising rapidly. Even if you don’t live in a 1-in-100-year flood zone, flood insurance is a good idea for all property owners and renters. The National Flood Insurance Program will insure residential properties for up to $250,000 and the contents for an additional $250,000. Contact your private insurance agent to get a policy.
Defend Your Home Against Floods and Wildfires
An inch of water in your home can cause $25,000 in damage; check out FEMA’s suggestions on protecting your home from flooding. Some examples:
- Elevate the furnace, water heater, and electric panel if susceptible to flooding.
- Install check valves in sewer traps to prevent floodwater from backing up into your home.
- Point your downspouts away from your home to prevent pooling at the corners of your house.
- Regrade the area around your home so it slopes away from the house — even slightly.
- Plant native grasses and long-rooted perennials in your yard to soak up floodwaters.
- Seal walls in basements with waterproofing compounds to avoid seepage.
- Keep an adequate supply of food, candles, and drinking water in case you are trapped inside your home.
To protect against wind damage, consider the FORTIFIED construction method, a voluntary construction standard backed by decades of research, which your roofing contractor or builder can use to help protect your home against severe weather. FORTIFIED structures can qualify for insurance discounts.
The Department of Homeland Security also has guidelines on how to deal with wildfires. For example:
- Designate a room that can be closed off from outside air. Close all doors and windows. Set up a portable air cleaner to keep indoor pollution levels low when smoky conditions exist.
- Create a fire-resistant zone that is free of leaves, debris, or flammable materials for at least 30 feet from your home.
- Store an N95 mask to protect yourself from smoke inhalation.
If Necessary, Relocate
No place is safe from weather extremes that our rapidly changing climate will bring. But some places are foolish to continue living in. If you live in a flood plain, barrier island, or high wildfire-risk area where insurance impossible to obtain or very expensive, evacuate. Leave permanently. The insurance market is finally beginning to price climate risk appropriately, and it is sending you a message. Get out of your high-risk living situation and move somewhere safer — particularly if the government offers you a taxpayer-funded buyout. Like a high-stakes game of musical chairs, the music will stop for the coastal property market — perhaps even this year — and you don’t want to be the one left without a chair.
One of my favorite parts of the must-read 2024 book by Abrahm Lustgarten, “On the Move” (my review here), is where the author, who lives in a wildfire-prone portion of the California Bay Area, describes his angst about experiencing the new climate change reality there: skies turned orange by smoke, the constant tension of being prepared to evacuate, rolling blackouts that ruin perishable food, and increased insurance rates. He recounts a phone conversation he had with Tulane University’s urban planning and climate migration expert, Jesse Keenan, where Lustgarten asks him:
“Should I be selling my house and getting —”
He cut me off. “Yes!” came his emphatic reply.
Climate Havens
The most cited U.S. “climate havens” in research papers, publications by national organizations, and by the media are older cities in the Great Lakes region, upper Midwest, and Northeast. They include Ann Arbor, Michigan; Duluth, Minnesota; Minneapolis; Buffalo, New York; Burlington, Vermont; and Madison, Wisconsin. These locations have the advantage of cooler temperatures and abundant water resources. In addition, they are located far from the ocean coast, where hurricanes and sea level rise will be problematic, and well away from the worst wildfire smoke hazards areas of the West. Canada, Norway, Sweden, and Finland are also potential climate havens.
But some of these places may not be great places to move to if the government, city infrastructure, or social and economic conditions are flawed. For example, I like to tout my home state of Michigan as a climate haven. But Michigan has a poor electrical grid and suffers the second-highest number of power outages of any state, behind Texas — a much larger state (Fig. 1). Thus, it is good to consider the quality of the infrastructure of a state you are considering moving to.
Remember that no place is immune from the consequences of climate change. For example, many of the “havens” listed above experienced severe wildfire smoke in summer 2023. And new research on the critical Atlantic ocean current system known as the Atlantic Meridional Overturning Circulation, or AMOC, has found that it is more likely than not (59% chance) to collapse in the next 25 years. Over a period of decades following such a collapse, a major disruption to the atmospheric circulation would cause a dangerous increase in extreme weather a few decades from now over northern Europe, including the so-called climate havens of Norway, Sweden, and Finland.
If you can’t move to a climate haven or you prefer not to, you can aim to find someplace closer to home that minimizes the climate risks endemic to your area.
Flood Risk
It’s critical to know the current and future flood risk of any place you might want to live. Check out my 2023 post, 30 great tools to determine your flood risk in the U.S. If you live in Miami, New York City, New Jersey, Charleston, Norfolk, Houston, New Orleans, Houston, or the Florida Keys, check out my review of eight great books on flood risks in these places; for California, read the new 2023 book, California Against the Sea.
Interactive maps and other resources
One way to explore the pros and cons of living in a particular U.S. city is through the U.S. Climate Vulnerability Index. Created by the Environmental Defense Fund, Texas A&M, and Darkhorse Analytics, this features an interactive map to explore environmental, social, economic, and infrastructure effects on a city and county level. Grist did a nice write-up of the tool in 2023.
FEMA has an interactive National Risk Index for Natural Hazards map that shows which communities are most at risk from natural hazards. It includes data about the expected annual losses to individual natural hazards, social vulnerability, and community resilience, available at county and census tract levels. A separate National Risk Index tool allows you to access county-level text data on 18 natural hazards. A similar interactive map that allows you to type in an address and see how many major disaster declarations have occurred for that county from 2011-2023 is available from rebuildbydesign.org (Fig. 3)
The tools above merge the physical and environmental risks from climate change with the societal risks that exacerbate weather and climate extremes. This approach provides the most complete picture of the dangers posed to a given community. If you want to consider the physical or environmental component on its own, take a look at these tools:
- An interactive map from The Climate Explorer (NOAA) allows you to explore predicted changes in U.S. temperature, precipitation, and high tide flooding.
- The 2023 National Climate Assessment has individual chapters detailing how climate change is expected to unfold for 10 U.S. regions.
- The American Communities Project has a non-interactive map of county-level climate risks for various hazards.
- Risk Factor from the nonprofit First Street Foundation provides a widely used, freely available tool for determining past, present, and future climate risk of an individual property. Type in an address to see on a one to 10 scale the risk for flood, heat, wildfire, wind, and air pollution hazards. Keep in mind that tools like this are controversial, though. A July 2024 study, National-Scale Flood Hazard Data Unfit for Urban RIsk Management, evaluated the First Street Foundation flood model with another flood model, and found about a “1 in 4 chance of models agreeing upon which properties are at risk”.
Stiff competition for livable places
If you do manage to find a more livable place to live, you may have plenty of competition from millions of others searching for the same thing. For example, Atlanta, which appears on Architectural Digest’s recent list of the top-10 most climate-resilient cities, faces steep challenges if it is to absorb the 1 million-plus climate refugees that could be headed there in the next 30 years. Water scarcity, deficient transportation and sewage infrastructure, social inequality, and lack of affordable housing head the list of issues for the city.
Climate change futurist Alex Steffen is one of the best at communicating the magnitude of the upheavals coming from the planetary crisis (I’m a subscriber to his excellent newsletter.) He recently commented:
But those homes, connected to systems less exposed to risk, where action to ruggedize is progressing, where institutions are functioning at a high level, where public goods and infrastructure are supported and well-managed, and where large numbers of desperate people are not overwhelming support systems — those homes will appreciate in value. Appreciate, I expect, a lot. A run on durability combined with a slow growth of housing supply will inevitably push those with less wealth out — leading to the bitter irony that young and/or poor people may find themselves among the climate-displaced, even when they’re living in some of the safest places on Earth.
The only real answer to this problem is a politics of urgent abundance. We must build at genuinely inclusive scales. If you live in a relatively safe place, and you don’t want it to be trapped in the amber of wealth, your town has to build enough housing (and workplaces and infrastructure and schools and so on) to meet a massive uptick in demand. It will need to go on building for decades. (I wrote a book about why building compact communities at scale is also a critical climate/sustainability solution.)
Not many prosperous towns are ready to do this. The ones that aren’t could quickly turn into enclaves of wealth. A lot of people will be left outside those gates when they close. Still, if you’re lucky or smart enough to get in, you and your family might find yourselves with some of the brightest futures around.
Money
Those with wealth will be much better positioned to weather the coming climate change storm. So it would be prudent now to begin financial planning for the coming planetary crisis; reducing the amount of debt you carry would be a good place to start. And if you have money tied up in fossil fuel companies, consider that their long-term business model must dim dramatically if our futures are to brighten.
Read: How can I make my retirement plan climate-friendly?
Related posts and resources
This is part four of a four-part series on U.S. climate change adaptation. The other parts:
Part one looked at a number of recent government adaptation efforts to prepare the U.S. for our new climate.
Part two looked at how far short U.S. climate change adaptation efforts fall from what is needed.
Part three is an essay giving my observations and speculations on how the planetary crisis may play out.
- Can a colossal extreme weather event galvanize action on the climate crisis?
- Book review: “On the Move” is a must-read account of U.S. climate migration
- Book review: “The Great Displacement” is a must-read
- Part one of my three-part sea level rise series: How fast are the seas rising?
- Part two of my three-part sea level rise series: Eight excellent books on sea level rise risk for U.S. cities
- Part three of my three-part sea level rise series: 30 great tools to determine your flood risk in the U.S.
- Bubble trouble: Climate change is creating a huge and growing U.S. real estate bubble
- Retreat From a Rising Sea: A Book Review
- Susan Crawford’s Substack feed on climate adaptation policy, Moving Day
- Climate futurist Alex Steffen’s newsletter; he also periodically offers a six-week course, A Crash Course in Personal Ruggedization (both have fees)
Been a trip to see how climate change denial went from fringe to acceptable mainstream for elected politicians to corporate propaganda to that ‘creepy feeling that something is very wrong’ to unaffordable home insurance to some percentage that the AMOC will stop in the next 25 years. Often, I have had much to say. Now, I have so much to say that I am stunned into silence. I actively try not to think about it. Fail, because I have a daughter and a grand-daughter I love very much. I live in the spectacular Puget Sound. The thought of it dying is unbearable, but the first terrible signs are now permanently present; the sometimes orange light from distant burning forests, a weirdly sudden violent storm, the newly brilliant summers with heat waves. I moved here three years ago, a climate refugee from the Northern California foothills, to buy time. My best friend said, I’d probably get ten more good years up here. Seven left?
“A politics of urgent abundance”…
In the first place, the article is irrelevant to everyone I know around my age, all of whom rent. In the second place, let’s look at what is suggested: have money, get more, give some to insurance companies, and build more, all of which are bits of advice consistent with the direction we are headed, and that which got us here; excepting the specific products reccommended, the article could have had the same functional direction and been about anything else which frightens homeowners.
I’d like to focus more on the promising line of thought suggested by the subject of the fourth paragraph, namely creating and sustaining place-based networks of aid and support. If we’re conceding catastrophic social and physical infrastructural failures, and it seems we are, building skills and communities might be more helpful, long term, than building bunkers.
I have been wondering if there is any movement for climate-realists who want to club together and build their own apartment buildings.
A climate-ready single-family home seems almost a contradiction in terms, unless maybe if you have four families in it to share the burden of all the repairs it’s going to need. Not mention any potential threat from criminals.
Did you actually read the piece? It suggests having a supply of meds on hand, a room you can seal off and N-95s for fires, battery backups, insurance (and yes, renter can get renter’s insurance). And it is arguably easier for a renter to move. You don’t have the transaction and pre-sale fix-up required for a sale. I spent a lot on that in a house that was generally in good condition in a prime neighborhood.
Yes, there are plusses to renting; i.e., move quickly and cheaply. But VC’s point is still essential. Finding a community of people with the needed skills (food growing, equipment fixing, and land to sustain the group) has greater success than going it alone. Who knew that the communes I knew in the 60’s would become an existential savior 70 years later? (Still have copies of the Whole Earth Catalog.)
Yes, and I appreciate you sharing it. Your point is addressed in my remark about specific products.
As to the cost if moving, I’d like to see those costs explored in terms of share of income/savings. I genuinely don’t have a guess one way or the other there, but that’s a question I think it’d be relevant to address.
Difficult for renters to move because there are Not enough affordable rentals in desirable areas.
I beg to differ. The Upper Peninsula of Michigan is a climate haven and cheap. Median rent for a house in Escanaba is $1200 v, the US average of over $1500. It’s even cheaper in Iron Mountain at $1000.
I don’t like the “get more insurance” angle, either.
Insurance is just risk transfer. What needs to happen is risk acceptance – you want to live in a condo on the coast of Florida? Fine, but bear the cost of rebuilding personally (or jointly with the other residents in the building.) Also, all the residents must sign specific agreements never to ask the government for assistance in rebuilding, either.
Yes, I think 20 years ago we should have said “the government will subsidize insurance in these risky areas only until the home accrues more than the current liability in claims, at which point we will no longer help you (or future property owners). Basically say “you can live there until something destroys your home, but then you have to take the buyout or be left without insurance”. And of course not provide any insurance subsidies for new builds in risky areas.
And as I said below, we could create standards and certifications for truly wildfire resistant new housing in wildfire prone areas. And then give those homeowners the lower rates that their home’s lower risk deserves. Instead of charging everyone basically the same rate regardless of the safety measures integrated in a home.
Insurance depends on a) claims being covered by the premiums on a large number of policies not claimed on, b) the company’s own investments in the money or stockmarkets and/or c) re-insurance – tho’ this also is subject to a). A major climate event is likely to trigger a tsunami of claims that will wipe out the insurer’s reserves – and overwhelm any re-insurer’s funds for the same reason – crash the stockmarket and blow up the banking system so I’d suggest the premiums would be more use as cash in your own pocket.
Selling up to move somewhere ‘safer’? Well, if you can find a sucker to sell to… at even half the price you’ll pay for somewhere ‘safer’.
Rely on the State or local authories to keep the necessary support systems running? Dream on. The folks that run these will be too busy pushing and shoving for the front seats in the sinking life-boat.
The above article is OK as far as climate collapse is limited to discrete events in limited areas – fires, floods, local droughts – but when the excrement really hits the revolving vanes ‘civilization’ will break down taking insurance companies, whole economies and society with it. The AMOC collapse will affect all of Western Europe adversely. Rising temperatures will affect agriculture globally with drought or excess rainfall wrecking yields, emptying supermarkets even in his ‘safe’ zones.
No, his advice might hold for a few years but will only defer the inevitable for most. I saw the writing on the wall years ago and moved to my best-guess at a ‘safe-zone’ (New Zealand) and am currently sizing up a move into a well-placed retirement village – a defined community of varied talents and self-interest in co-operation, far from the madding crowd and with a good agricultural hinterland (limitless milk, mutton and beef); it’s surprising how many retirement/’lifestyle’ villages park themselves by the sea in order to sell the view and the bracing sea air.
Fortunately at my age I’ll likely be gone by the time the center falls apart anyway, and this is the best I can do in the meantime.
“A politics of urgent abundance”… Yes, from a position of privilege, requiring lots and lots of money. I second your aiming at the fourth paragraph. These community intangibles will be sorely missed when, lo and behold, it turns out runaway global warming makes your “climate haven” not so great. To be fair, if your transition is urban to urban this may not be that big a deal. If you are targeting a rural area be prepared to be unwelcome.
Consider the idea of a large portion of the population displaced and heading to these same “havens”, should they turn out to be so. I’m picturing bumper to bumper traffic on northbound, one lane rt 7, every one of them looking for a place to survive.
There is one thing I strongly recommend. Get in touch with your humanity. Find your religion. (That’s a metaphor. I do not fear god.) Pay close attention to those you love. Minimize the regrets you may have later.
And give Skippy another treat.
Building skills and communities AND bunkers might be helpfullest of allest in the longest run. Including skills in making those bunkers so good to live in that they qualify as homes. Bunkerhomes. Homebunkers.
If the future holds rogue random F6, F7 and F8 tornados, maybe right where you live, you might want a house which can survive an F6, F7 or F8 tornado. If the future holds rogue random Cat 6, Cat 7 or Cat 8 hurricanes, you might want a house which can survive a Cat 6, Cat 7 or Cat 8 hurricane. Building such houses on the fly after a weather event may be beyond the scope of a disasterized and isolated community. It might be better to start building such houses right now, while we still have the High Civilization which can get such houses built. ( Would a low local civilization make such houses partway possible? Maybe! My youngest brother was Peace Corps for 3 years in Batanes Province of Phillipines. That area was a Hurricane Alley. The Batanese designed the following home and other local building architecture to cope with that basic fact: Every house had stone walls 3-4 feet thick and every roof was made of cheap sacrificial cogon grass thatching. Every time a hurricane blew the roof off, they made another roof out of cogon grass thatching. Here are some images of cogon grass. Each image has an url for url-diving.)
https://images.search.yahoo.com/search/images;_ylt=AwrNP0zp68RmmgQAw95XNyoA;_ylu=Y29sbwNiZjEEcG9zAzEEdnRpZAMEc2VjA3Nj?p=cogon+grass+image&fr=sfp#id=0&iurl=https%3A%2F%2Fthumbs.dreamstime.com%2Fz%2Fcloseup-fresh-cogon-grasses-wild-field-closeup-fresh-cogon-imperata-cylindrica-grasses-wild-field-natural-197345685.jpg&action=click
As to climate change havens, the best havens might be those places where survival is likeliest even in serial power/gas/water/etc. outages . . . . over and over and over again. And where survival is likeliest once all the grids crash and stay crashed for good. What parts of the US would be survivable enough that one could live a Thirteenth Century lifestyle if one can stand the thought?
All without mention to where the food is going to come from – link into community farming and farm your own as well – the corporate take over of all things essential – and the continued BS, the continued subversion by industrial farming and speculations in land prices for farming – all to push patented seed, pest killers, weed killers, hydrocarbon based fertilizer, stranglehold of the ‘supply chain’ and substandard end product – which by the way has impacts on the gut biome and negative effects upon the pollinators. Maybe they will breed bees to be impervious to these pesticides and, by doing, junk them as pollinators…whoops. Lets get all in on digital currency – that ought to help (aaaaarrrg).
The small farmer – well they can’t have them around to point the way to good practices…. it’s just a trouble and PR expense by the “market makers” to let common folk believe that ways exist out of this.
Sorry for the negative rant …
“A lot of people will be left outside those gates when they close” – maybe it is better to be outside the gates when they close because a lot of people will be trapped inside.
You prepare for a crisis the same way you prepare for any other challenge you can’t handle alone.
You build and maintain networks of individuals you can rely on by steadily engaging in reciprocity with them over a long period of time. You exchange acts of labor (good words and polite conversations don’t count) with them and match the degree and difficulty they provide. (So it’s small favor for small favor not large favor for small favor.) This is all wrapped into an Honor System that both parties must adhere to for it to function. (Its not bound by or enforced by Religion, which is a good thing since dogma tempts the participants to ignore what they ought to do based on disliking the other person’s Religion.)
And the size of the network isn’t the most important aspect, the most important aspect is how reliable the network members are. So if you can build and maintain a network of 2-3 people that’s okay.
I should have added that I don’t focus on prepping (getting stockpiles) in talking about this topic because:
A.) Most can’t give/get anything more than their mind, body, and will power.
B.) There isn’t a reasonable stockpile that can sustain a constant draw down. It’s just a buffer nothing more.
C.) Your stockpile is only as robust as all of your neighbors’ stockpiles.
Yes,
Which is why I think Religions that encourage (or outright force) their members to have a stockpile (like the Mormons) will fair a bit better.
Now is the time for nonMormons to learn Social Survivalism from the Mormons. What if every UAW or Teamsters local union hall was a UAW Stake or a Teamsters Stake? With community canning facilities in the basement, demonstration gardens on the property, gave classes in food growing, bulk buying, bulk storage and preservation, etc?
Here are two links to articles about Mormon Stake.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stake_(Latter_Day_Saints)
https://www.mormonwiki.com/Stake
( And as I read the articles, I see that the Stake is an intermediate level of organization.
The smallest level is the Ward, which I gather is a single church. So a Stake is several Wards organized into a coherent social unit. So maybe each Local Union Hall could be a Union Ward and a coherent set of Union Halls could be a Union Stake).
Another way to build trust with a neighbor is to support them when they are sick. Offering to get groceries or other needed items is helpful. You can bring them comfort foods or meals also.
Yes,
Just make sure they do reciprocate in kind without too much of a wait.
This could be a way for “everyone” to test “every other one” by individually helping many different near and far neighbors to see which ones reciprocate and in what way.
Over time the ” good neighbors” can learn who the “bad neighbors” are. They can then work quietly with eachother in secret to be VEry VEry sure the “bad neighbors” have no idea such a thing is even happening. And they can all pool joint resources to support the “bad neighbors” just barely enough to keep the “bad neighbors” from becoming actively vengeful and violent.
The “good neighbors” will also want to figure out how to look poor in public. In the event of a semi-famine, you want everyone to see you slowly losing visible weight in public. Maybe learn how to shave in such a way as to leave a stubble shadow on your cheeks to simulate advancing gauntness. Stuff like that.
Just my opinion
Lending aide or giving does not (or should not) come with an expectation of a return (that is some very real expectation that the one you helped in uninformed). Then to determine good or bad from that ‘make sure they do reciprocate in kind without too much of a wait’ – Well I am one to lend aide, support my neighbors and I would not want anyone to support or give me aide who has a hidden agenda or test of my decency due to some paranoid or trust issues.
No one should be a doormat for others.
Give what is given, anything less means your selfish/greedy and anything more means your insulting the other person’s honor and maybe putting them in your debt.
Excellent list of resources for the USA, thank you Yves!
Masters mentions staying in one’s community and I just want to expand on that a little, because while living in a flood plane may not be a good idea in any case, there are some solutions to living in wildfire prone areas. Autoclaved Aerated Concrete (AAC) holds up well to fires, though there is still the issue of how one constructs the roof. Fiber cement board siding works well too, especially if there is mineral wool behind it. Roofs also have several risk-reducing options available like metal roofs with (again) mineral wool beneath, and vents coated in intumescent foam that expands when things get hot, preventing embers from entering the ventilation space. And tempered glass windows, though more expensive, hold up better to wildfire heat. If that isn’t enough, automated shutters are available to protect the windows (important because if a window breaks during a wildfire then a lot more heat gets into the home). There is a good document from Marin county on wildfire safe building practices.
Of course the first thing is to reduce the amount of combustible things (including plants) near the home. How much one can do that of course depends on where one lives and how close one’s neighbor is. A burning house next door may be impossible to successfully guard against..
As of now, however, the insurance response to wildfire risk is mostly to crank up the premiums or leave the market entirely. Or at least that is what I have seen in my corner of Western USA. Some places they do look at brush in the yard (local Firewise programs) but I think this is more of a “do this or no insurance for you” kind of thing. The discounts for fire safe building practices are small and only cover a few things. So the little piggies who build their homes out of bricks still wind up subsudizing their brothers. As long as insurance covers an area at all.
As somewhat of an aside, synthetic cushions and fabrics used in furniture are a much greater risk in a fire than their natural counterparts, not only because they catch fire faster (at least without oodles of toxic fire retardants which lesen over time as they are released into the home) but because they release toxic smoke when they do burn. Which probably has not a huge amount to do with surviving a wildfire except that a synthetic foam couch with a synthetic fuzzy blanket on it will catch fire more quickly after, say, a window breaks during a wildfire. FSRI has a good video showing this.
And of course all this is well and good but not everyone has the money, the interest, and the time to oversee the construction of a truly wildfire safe home. I would hope that in California the builders would be adapting to a desire for more stringent wildfire safety standards, but thus far the standards I have read have focused on how existing homes can be retrofitted, which is a good idea but it isn’t the same as “how should we design future neighborhoods” or even “how should we rebuild after a wildfire destroys our neighborhood”. Where I am, builders are not exactly inclined to learn new things, nor to spend extra money on invisible new home features until consumers insist on it. Which they won’t do en masse unless there are standards and certifications for new homes that insurance companies recognize and handsomely reward. Seems to me that this would ideally be a job for the government, working with building and fire science scholars from universities, as well as insurance companies. Some new or rebuilt communities might even insist that all homes be certified as such, to prevent your neighbors’ home from setting your home on fire. Hopefully we will get on all that before too many more homes get built in wildfire prone areas…
Vermont is not ‘Climate-immune’ as indicated in the graphic. Quite the opposite, it is already experiencing catastrophic flooding on a regular basis. Wildfire smoke from Canada makes going outside during the summer dangerous for weeks at a time.
And winter is extreme here. I don’t think people really understand how dangerous a VT winter is during a power failure, which is increasingly common. You Must have a wood stove and plenty of wood. It’s not optional when it is -20f outside. You will die.
On top of everything else, the growing season is only 90 days long here. I love VT but it is absolutely not the place I would run to if civilization started to collapse. Half your year here would be felling and splitting firewood…
“Even if you don’t live in a 1-in-100-year flood zone, flood insurance is a good idea for all property owners and renters.”
Really? Pay for reimbursement for a risk when you don’t have it?
The issue with FEMA floodzone designations is they are not accurate. (You may be in a potentially dangerous floodzone and not know it.) Getting flood insurance for even the very rare event (1-in-500) may be wise, if you cannot afford to repair water damage (which can be serious even when the structure ‘looks’ fine).
Freak flooding can occur when a natural drainage path (local or extant) gets blocked. As the article indicates a few inches of water can create havok.
You never know where the flood zones will be in the Super RainDump WaterBomb events of tomorrow.
If you get a Harvey-load of rain every day for 5 days in a row, you may discover your little area to be a “perched pond” which wouldn’t have been an issue in the old days long gone by, but might become an issue in the new days to come.
Surprising new “micro-flood plains” will emerge in the 60 inches-per-day rains of tomorrow.
Canada, Norway, Sweden, and Finland are also potential climate havens.
…
a major disruption to the atmospheric circulation would cause a dangerous increase in extreme weather a few decades from now over northern Europe, including the so-called climate havens of Norway, Sweden, and Finland.
Despite this process of elimination, you need to know that Canada really sucks. Honest. Don’t come here. We talk funny, and our buck is worth only $0.73. Plus, you have to give up your guns at the border, and you will be made to speak only French within 1 year of arrival. And the process of cultural assimilation is so total that after only months you’ll be cut off by those you’ve left behind because of your insufferable smugness. I could go on … but you get the general idea. You’ll thank me for talking you out of a bad idea.
Americans are benevolently ignorant about Canada, while Canadians are malevolently well informed about the United States.
Bartlett J. Brebner
Canadians spend half their time trying to convince Americans that they’re not English… and the other half trying to convince the English that they’re not Americans.
Carl William Brown
;)
I bet the Franco-Quebeckians don’t have that problem.
steppenwolf
They don’t, because in winter they are mostly all in Florida. And, believe it or not, they also speak English there, without the accents-me.
Nice try :-)
Yeah, I see what he did there …
I live in a coastal city that has ALL the dangers (fire, sea level rise, stream course flooding) but the wealthy from Los Angeles are buying older homes, flattening the site, and building two-story homes over much of the lot as the building code allows; all to escape the TRAFFIC in LA. What Climate Change?!!!
No matter where you live in the city any remodel or new structure must meet the most strict fire code (as if it was in the flammable Chapparal vegetation). Why? Because the Fire Marshall says there is not the manpower or equipment to stop a multi-building conflagration.
There are multi-million dollars homes being built on the Santa Barbara cliff edge at this very moment. Do the owners know that the Coastal Commission will not allow seaside revetments of any kind? Probably not.
(The book by Rosanna Zia (a friend) recommended in the article is exceptional for discussing technical Calif. coastal sea rise issues with aplomb. She is intrepid.)
And lastly, everyone in the City is connected to the sole waste water treatment plant, that sits maybe 200 meters from the shoreline. Sea level rise that discombobulates the plant makes everyone a potential Cholera victim.
See this: https://www.latimes.com/california/story/2024-08-20/hyperion-sewage-spill-los-angeles-settlement
As Elon has demonstrated, having more money doesn’t raise your IQ
The Great Lakes states will be net winners given the access to lake water and established infrastructure in underpopulated cities well-below their historical population peaks (Detroit, Toledo, Cleveland, Buffalo, etc).
Assuming that water is priced with externalities included (which is a big ‘if’). LA is getting a water bail-out if/when snowpack water becomes unreliable, just as Florida will get infrastructure bailouts for storm surge walls.
There are too many variables to construct a safe haven, one cannot predict the which is a q probable natural d or a path of a natural disaster.
For example: Go live in a cave in the woods: Oops forest fire. and reliable food supplies.
Go to a proactive town: Too much wood used be able to protect the houses.
One needs a communal process, not an individual process. Some will survive lucky, others will not. The key is community survival, not individual survival. The best examples I can point are Hiroshima or the Great Fire of London.
I agree with this. There is no way to prepare for all of the threats of climate change. Here in Uruguay there are no hurricanes, earthquakes, it doesn’t get very cold or very hot, we have our own water and food and renewable sources for energy, but who knows? My biggest concern is sea level rise because we are so close to the Antarctica. But that should equalize across the globe and in the long run be okay. To me what matters is the stability of the culture and political system and the tendency to work together to solve problems. I couldn’t stay in the US, I left 8 years ago because it’s just too stupid. They’re already problems in the US and the responses are non-existent. I can’t have any hope for the future in the US. So I left my whole family and came all by myself to a place where I don’t speak the language and I don’t know anyone but it’s worked out okay. I have friends, importantly their local and in their twenties and thirties. I hope for the best. I now own three properties here because I was so concerned about being dependent on the US dollar and my pension from the state of California and my social security. So I’ve created local income streams here. And I’ve created friendships with younger people. Not only expats. And my properties are 10 to 20 m above current sea level. Still I think about finding another place that is outside of Uruguay and is warmer than Uruguay in the winter and of a higher elevation to buy my fourth apartment.
Wow, now that’s gumption!
Maybe I’ll join you, life on the ‘American Riviera’ is getting a bit hectic.
Having lived in the Great Lakes and Northeast regions, it’s looking like extreme flooding will become fairly commonplace. The Yin to the West Coast’s wildfire Yang. Connecticut being a recent “good” example.
I stopped worrying about prepping like this years ago after realizing how monumentally catastrophic our position is. It’s natural human hubris to frantically try to prepare yourself for a future out of your control.
Do what you think you need to in order to survive. The best thing, though, is to mentally steel yourself. We are proverbially standing on the beach watching a multi-hundred foot wave coming ashore. There’s only so much you can realistically do, even with millions of dollars at your disposal.
Seize the day, prepare the best you can, and constantly remind others that billionaires would make for a great BBQ.
I’m the one who always has these in the car or with us at the cabin in the summer when fire risk and more likely smoke risk are an ever present danger.
iEvac fire hoods are $200 and have a 5 year shelf life…
https://elmridgeprotection.com/products/ievac-smoke-hood-fire-escape-mask
A conflagration that was 28 acres when I first mentioned it a week ago, is now over 1,300 acres on its way to maybe 5,000 to 10,000 acres, and i’m not worried too much about it, in fact i’m glad in a way its happening, as it helps fill in the fire mosaic over the past 4 years here. The area where the fire is burning presently hasn’t seen a wildfire since the Rutherford B. Hayes administration, a bit overdue.
The Coffeepot Fire will run into the path of the 1,430 acre 2018 Eden Fire on one side, and into the path of the 175,000 acre 2020 SQF Complex on the other side, with an assist from the 88,000 acre 2021 KNP Fire as it heads downhill into it, with no buildings of any sort in its way.
Yeah, that sounds crazy, Wuk is telling you to be in a burned up area, but its also pretty safe in the aftermath.
When its all said and done and because the Coffeepot Fire will need to be attacked from the air quite a bit, i’m guessing the bill will approach $50 million if not more.
The money to fight fires always seems to be there, but what if it isn’t sometime in the future?
Yeah, living in the ashes after a forest fire is attractive—to the organisms at the bottom of the food chain, not the top. ;)
3 years after the KNP Fire, I swear you wouldn’t know that a fire had come though if you had no prior knowledge of what went down on a wide swath of it, so much greenery filling in the moonscape look after the blaze.
Oh, I agree. I’ve hiked in after-fire forests myself. I’m very aware of the ability of the landscape to recover: the ash is full of nutrients that nurture grasses and shrubs that, without a tree leaf canopy, consume solar energy with photosynthetic abandon. In three years the grasses have deep roots, the shrubs are breast height or more. Their leaves are readily available for consumption by animals of all types. The trophic pyramid restarts. The 100′ tall trees will come last—maybe of a different specie, or not at all. The planet is never the same twice.
There is no
where to hide. Quit agonizing over things you cannot change, and enjoy your life, as it is.
True dat. All of these comments and suggestions rely on growth: buy, fix, create, spend ……. and of course, massive growth is what got us here. We’re buying shovels to dig deeper. There are some good ideas in the article and comments however.
In the Little Ice Age lotsa places froze extensively. What I think is coming down the pike for us is mucho evaporation during the Big Heat, and thus freshwater will be quite scarce in many locales compared to the past.
The main reason we are here has nothing to do with climate change, it’s to go for a walk in amazing surroundings. Everything else is window dressing:
One of the oldest hydroelectric systems in the state.
5 rivers that bring all the water down from 14,000 feet, we are first in line.
No crime or gangs and just a smidgen of graffiti.
No corporate presence to speak of aside from a couple gas stations, and we have no fast food restaurants.
Just 1,500 fulltime residents in about 45 square miles that encompasses Tiny Town.
I’m not sure about the hood devices being described, but some underground mines deploy “self contained self rescuers”. These are masks with an oxygen supply, and they can supply air for quite a while (hours) if someone is resting and not exerting themselves. The name “self rescuer” is meant to suggest they’re for getting out of hazardous situations, not for donning to go into hazardous situations. They’re called “self contained” to distinguish from other self rescuers that only scrub carbon monoxide and filter smoke.
I’m not sure where you can buy these retail, though. They’re mostly sold to mining companies in bulk. I think they’re a few hundred dollars each.
I wish there’s someone, anyone doing the same kind of analysis for countries in East and South East Asia, because I feel most people residing in these regions are not collapse aware. A Thai colleague of a cousin in Indonesia once told me that he wouldn’t have children because “everything will be gone anyway by the time he is old”, but other than this guy, I have yet to meet another person living in Asia who is willing to have an open conversation on this very matter. People of Chinese descent will just resort to cliches like 人算不如天算 i.e. man proposes, God disposes while continuing on the same path they are on. Very frustrating.
And when the readers have figured out how to deal with climate change they will just have the other remaining problems created by Modernity to worry about:
* Biodiversity loss
* Soil loss
* Water scarcity
* Chemical pollution
* Resource depletion
Global warming is the easiest part of the polycrisis to fix. Good luck with the rest!
Sunspots will decline eventually and the temperatures and Jetstreams will refrain from wandering.
But those who prepare will eventually be rewarded.
Foodforests are a great idea, expect no relief when the next Nova hits