Episode 1904
A Heartfelt Update on California's Wildfires and Their Impact on Home Safety
The devastating California wildfires are reshaping how we think about construction and building safety for years to come. Eric G. shares his deep concern for those affected, especially highlighting the loss of homes and the challenges faced in combating such fierce fires fueled by hurricane-force winds. He delves into the importance of building resilience in homes, particularly in wildfire-prone areas, emphasizing new strategies to prevent embers from igniting structures. Additionally, Eric discusses upcoming changes to water and energy standards under the new administration, suggesting a potential shift in regulations that could affect everyday appliances and fixtures. As the community rallies to support those impacted, Eric urges listeners to take proactive measures to protect their properties and remain informed about these critical changes in building practices.
Takeaways:
- The recent California wildfires have devastated communities, leading to significant changes in building practices.
- Ember attacks are a major cause of home destruction during wildfires, necessitating new construction standards.
- Eric G emphasizes the importance of community support for wildfire victims during recovery efforts.
- Future home designs will need to incorporate better fire-resistant materials to withstand wildfires.
- The wildfires this season are unprecedented, affecting areas previously thought to be safe.
- Changes in federal energy standards for appliances are expected to roll back regulations soon.
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Transcript
It's around the house.
Speaker A:When it comes to remodeling and renovating your home, there is a lot to know, but we've got you covered.
Speaker A:This is around the house.
Eric G.:Welcome to the Round the House show, the next generation of home improvement.
Eric G.:I'm Eric G.
Eric G.:For joining me today.
Eric G.:It is the 8th of January and I tell you what, it's a somber day here and around the house because I am just heartbroken for all of the people in our listening area down in Southern California that are dealing with these wildfires from this wind event.
Eric G.:And we lost a great, you know, we have a great member of this show that is a frequent guest.
Eric G.:We lost his house this last week.
Eric G.:Him and his family are safe.
Eric G.:So he lost that last night.
Eric G.:But I've been watching the news and as of 7:00 this morning on the 8th, which is what time I'm recording this right now, I think it's going to come out that we have basically lost houses from, you know, Malibu to Santa Monica.
Eric G.:And that is a huge stretch of road, if you don't understand that area.
Eric G.:Well, I do because, you know, I have been down in that area.
Eric G.:I have visited David's house down there, his little bit of paradise.
Eric G.:And my heart breaks for him losing everything down there.
Eric G.:And he was in the middle of a town, he was in the middle of Pacific Palisades.
Eric G.:And I think this event here, plus the other three fires that California is dealing with.
Eric G.:And let's talk about wildfires.
Eric G.:I have lived through wildfires myself.
Eric G.:I have actually been knocked off the roof of my house from a plane dropping water in eastern Washington.
Eric G.:So I have been in the thick of it.
Eric G.:But I've never seen anything like this where you've got hurricane force winds and a firestorm.
Eric G.:And this is something that that horror movies are made of and it just is absolutely crazy.
Eric G.:Just that fire that's down in the Pacific Palisades area.
Eric G.:If you were to drive around the evacuation perimeter right now, that's like 50 miles.
Eric G.:So it is a massive deal.
Eric G.:And this is something that I think is going to change how we do things as far as building homes in areas of wildfires.
Eric G.:That includes my house.
Eric G.:I live up here in the Pacific Northwest, as you know, if you're a listener.
Eric G.:And I tell you what, this is going to change how we build homes because there are, we're going to come back and see that there's billions of dollars of damage and they're not anywhere near done with this yet.
Eric G.:Last night they couldn't run helicopters of Course they don't run the planes at night, but it was just evacuate and try to save as many buildings as possible.
Eric G.:But when you've got a 100 mile an hour wind gust, there's not much you can do with a fire hose to stop that house from burning because it's just taking, it's like a blowtorch.
Eric G.:There's just no way to put enough people on that.
Eric G.:So I think we are going to see some major changes coming up here over the next, you know, 36 months of how we build houses, how we build them.
Eric G.:As far as making him resilient, I mean, David's house, if you were a pro football player, you could throw a football and land it in the sand.
Eric G.:And he had miles of residential homes behind him and it didn't matter.
Eric G.:I would have bet money and if I was a bet to talk to him right now, which I'm not going to because I just can't imagine his grief and loss and trying to figure out what's next.
Eric G.:But to me, looking at this, I would have never guessed that he would have been in a position to be.
Eric G.:From the way the fire came, it looked like, I mean, he had high schools, he had theaters, he had residences, he had all these things, football fields between him and the fire for miles.
Eric G.:So it really shows you that, that no matter what mother nature wants to do, when you think you could be safe from wildfire, especially here on the west coast, you definitely are not.
Eric G.:And you need to rethink how you do this.
Eric G.:Now, many of the homes that you see, you know, the embers are what got it.
Eric G.:I mean, it was just embers flying everywhere you could see it.
Eric G.:It would catch a wood fence on fire.
Eric G.:The wood fence would burn up to the house and so on and so forth.
Eric G.:It would catch the bark on fire by the front or the back.
Eric G.:It would come in through the ventilation.
Eric G.:Now they're making vents that, that stop ember embers from coming into attic control spaces or ventilated areas.
Eric G.:These things, I think are going to be the next generation of what you see there.
Eric G.:If you're in California listening to this right now, my best bet, if you're in, excuse me, any of these areas, I would get out there.
Eric G.:If you're safe, maybe it's time to block those vents up for until the fire danger is over.
Eric G.:If you can stop the, you know, the, the embers from blowing into your attic spaces through the soffit fence, through any of the roof fence, if you can block that stuff off temporarily until the Fire danger is over.
Eric G.:Maybe some duct tape could help you.
Eric G.:All I'm saying, that could be something that you could do.
Eric G.:You know, wet your yard down, make sure and drop the fence that goes up to your house, get your saws all out, get your circular, saw it, drop it down, make sure that that wood is not going up to your house.
Eric G.:And you know, if you have to rake away any of the landscape stuff or clear anything back away from the house, do it.
Eric G.:That's how you will save your house.
Eric G.:On a day like today in Southern California and there have been just crazy, crazy amounts of fires and they've got more days, more of wind down there.
Eric G.:So my heart goes out to my friends like David out there in the hundreds of thousands of other people that are affected by this down there.
Eric G.:And it's really sad.
Eric G.:It's something that I don't think was easily preventable.
Eric G.:They knew this was coming.
Eric G.:And all it takes is one little spark.
Eric G.:And you've got too many people to fight that down there and make anything really.
Eric G.:I mean, when you have that, that kind of win, there's really not a defense that works well for that.
Eric G.:So anybody down there, you know, heed the warnings as far as is evacuating, we are going to really see some ramifications to buildings, how we build in the future.
Eric G.:I think this is going to change a lot of things and I'm going to really try to help people here as best I can from what I can do up here to make sure that, you know, that I can help my friends.
Eric G.:And if you have friends in Southern California, reach out to them, send them a quick message.
Eric G.:We're going to have to, as a community out there, we're going to have to reach out and help these people because it is such a devastation.
Eric G.:This is no different than what we see on the east coast with hurricanes.
Eric G.:This is no different than, you know, big earthquakes that take cities down.
Eric G.:This is going to be one of the wildfires of a generation or generations by the time this is over with.
Eric G.:And we're gonna have to really rally around our friends and make sure they're okay and make sure that they land on their feet, because as we know, it takes insurance companies a long time, and especially with this mass of people out there, they're not equipped, and I'm not even sure if they're financially equipped to handle these kind of losses.
Eric G.:So it's something that is going to take time.
Eric G.:It is something that is going to take many years to put back.
Eric G.:I bet you right now, three or four years from now there will still be people trying to get things built back because we have communities gone.
Eric G.:So let's rally around those friends.
Eric G.:Let's see what we can do to help them.
Eric G.:This is a massive, massive issue.
Eric G.:And if you're just watching on the news across the country, I stayed up late last night.
Eric G.:If you want to see what I'm talking about on January 8, a great free way to do it is take a look at Pluto Television.
Eric G.:Just like the planet.
Eric G.:Take a look at that.
Eric G.:Go to KCAL on there.
Eric G.:You can watch it for free.
Eric G.:You can get an idea what I'm talking about.
Eric G.:And I tell you what, boy, I feel bad for all the people out there.
Eric G.:The lives lost, the people that were hurt, there were lots of injuries.
Eric G.:Last night I was watching a fire pop up that was 20 acres and within an hour they had people in an old folks home out in a 711 parking lot with hospital beds in the parking lot with flames lapping at them, trying to get them into anything that could drive them away from the fire.
Eric G.:So really emotional guys, really big deal.
Eric G.:This is going to be something that changes building moving forward.
Eric G.:Now today I was gonna be talking about all the things at the Consumer Electronics show and quite frankly, I'm gonna push that to next week.
Eric G.:This is not something I just, I'm not wanting to talk about new products today.
Eric G.:It just doesn't feel right.
Eric G.:We can talk about that next week.
Eric G.:They're not going anywhere.
Eric G.:We'll talk about that in next week's midweek special.
Eric G.:One thing I did see yesterday before all of this fire stuff came out, I just want to give you a quick update on this because it's just a small one, but I saw President elect Trump give a press conference and we are not talking politics here today.
Eric G.:But I just want to talk about what I heard him talk about which gives us an idea of what we're going to see moving forward.
Eric G.:You know, I talk about, heck, I talk about it in this weekend show.
Eric G.:We are going to see those water and energy standards get dialed back.
Eric G.:We were on track this year to be the death of the top load washing machine.
Eric G.:The good news for you top load washing machine fans is the government is going to give you a stay on losing those in the new policies coming forward.
Eric G.:So I see federal, now this is a big deal.
Eric G.:Federal water standards for faucets or dishwashers, for appliances, for, you know, toilets, things like that.
Eric G.:I see that changing.
Eric G.:I see that getting dialed back.
Eric G.:Now it doesn't mean that your local state or local governments won't change something for you.
Eric G.:But federally, I think we're going to see those things change back.
Eric G.:So I think now it's going to be up to the people if they want to have a little more water coming out of their shower head and you're not in some drought area like California where it's a big issue.
Eric G.:This is one of those things that I think there's gonna be some reprieve on that.
Eric G.:Stay tuned.
Eric G.:Just like any politician, what's made his promises before versus what happens later can be iffy.
Eric G.:But knowing President Trump in his track record, when he says he's gonna fix it, got a hunch that's gonna get fixed from his eyes.
Eric G.:Whether you agree with it or not, I don't like the government getting into my stuff that I can put on my house.
Eric G.:So I get that.
Eric G.:I think you're going to see the, the push away from.
Eric G.:I mean, literally this last week we had the federal government come in and say that they were going to discontinue a majority of the on demand tankless water heaters unless you went to the super efficient ones.
Eric G.:Those were going to get taken off the books.
Eric G.:They were going to get banned coming up in the next year.
Eric G.:They were gonna go away.
Eric G.:So I think in a couple weeks you're gonna see those things get quickly changed.
Eric G.:And I think that natural gas appliances and some of that stuff on a federal level is gonna be different now.
Eric G.:We'll see what happens on the local level.
Eric G.:I think still in, in, you know, in, in Washington state, you're still gonna see lawsuits there.
Eric G.:They're gonna be going where they, the, basically the state of Washington will be suing the people of that voted them in for trying to save their gas appliances.
Eric G.:But we'll see what happens when it, when it changes federally.
Eric G.:And I think that's going to be a little bit of a window change there.
Eric G.:We'll see what happens.
Eric G.:So stay tuned for that.
Eric G.:I think that's a battle that is just starting and it's going to affect, of course, appliances, heating and cooling, heating water, that kind of stuff moving forward.
Eric G.:All right, guys, I gotta get back to it here.
Eric G.:I've got a lot on my plate today and this is already running long for a midweek special.
Eric G.:But I just wanted to give you an update.
Eric G.:What I'm seeing on this Pacific Palisades fire and as well as the three other, at least three other fires that are going on.
Eric G.:You know, there's a lot of people right now that are in evacuations and I think it's just going to get worse today on January 8th at a little after 7:15 this morning.
Eric G.:All right, guys, have a great rest of the week here.
Eric G.:Give some love to our friends in California.
Eric G.:I know a lot of us make fun of our California friends down there.
Eric G.:They're all Americans.
Eric G.:They're all part of our country.
Eric G.:And even though we make fun of California at times, we need to put our arms around those friends and family members down there and make sure that they're getting taken care of.
Eric G.:Because like any natural disaster, it takes a long time for help to come.
Eric G.:And it's going to be up to us, our friends and neighbors, to make sure that they get the help that they need to be sustaining.
Eric G.:And we'll see what happens.
Eric G.:All right, everybody, have a great rest of the week.
Eric G.:Stay safe out there.
Eric G.:Thoughts and prayers go out to our friends in Southern California and anyone else out there dealing with these kind of tragedies this week.
Eric G.:I'm Eric G.
Eric G.:Thanks for tuning into around the House.
Speaker C:Somewhere unseen and undiscovered Anywhere beyond.
Speaker C:For me, love is a love song let's be lovers we're all over the radio Take my hand out Nowhere to go all over the radio With.
