Living With Fire: Inside Northern California’s First ‘Wildfire-Prepared Neighborhood’

In the small Sierra foothills community of Cameron Park, state officials, Cal Fire leaders, members of the insurance and construction industries, and a group of “El Dorado Roses” gathered around a yellow ceremonial ribbon. The Roses — mature women in Victorian dresses with large hats festooned in artificial flowers who serve as ambassadors for El Dorado County’s Chamber of Commerce — had come to celebrate the opening of new model homes for a unique neighborhood.

The 24 single-story homes planned for the Stone Canyon development in Cameron Park, now under construction and up for sale, will form Northern California’s first “wildfire-prepared neighborhood.” Developers and policymakers hope the designation from the Insurance Institute for Business & Home Safety could offer a blueprint for building — and insuring — homes in an era of megafires.

With insurance companies reluctant to insure fire-prone parts of California after a string of catastrophic blazes, state officials and builders are increasingly looking to fire-hardened construction to keep housing both insurable and habitable.

“Fire-hardened homes are the future of the state of California,” El Dorado County Supervisor George Turnboo said. He bemoaned the plight of Caldor Fire survivors in his district who find insurance difficult to obtain — including himself. He said he now pays $10,000 a year for insurance that once cost $900.

The construction company leading the Stone Canyon project, KB Home, is betting that fire-prepared construction will attract buyers seeking peace of mind — and make it easier for them to obtain insurance. Nam Joe, Sacramento division president for KB Home, said buyers in the company’s first wildfire-prepared neighborhood, in fire-prone Escondido, enjoy more insurance options than owners of non-prepared homes nearby.

Walking around a model home at the Stone Canyon ribbon-cutting on Thursday, visitors’ feet crunched on small pebbles of crushed granite beside a circulating water fountain, paved stones, river rocks and drought-resistant plants.

“This is some of the most beautiful Zone 0 landscapes I’ve seen,” said Roy Wright, CEO of IBHS, as he detailed features of a model home.

“Zone 0” refers to the five-foot perimeter of crushed rock surrounding the entire house, designed to keep burning embers from collecting at the base of the walls.

In examining homes that burned in last year’s L.A. fires, Wright said he and his team found that houses within range of fire had a 90% chance of damage or destruction if burnable material was within five feet of the home. They published their post-fire investigation findings last month.

Clearing flammable material within that perimeter is one of the most effective ways of hardening a home — and among the most accessible to homeowners. The practice is now the subject of a much-debated policy under review by the California Board of Forestry and Fire Protection for high fire-risk areas.

Some homeowners associations have raised concerns that compliant homes will be unattractive or stripped of charm.

“I think there’s folks who have created an [inaccurate] narrative about what’s going to be required,” Wright said. “I think what we see here is something that really is survivable and beautiful at the same time.”

The home’s backyard looks out onto mature oak woodland and wide green fields. Young trees, planted away from the house, line a fence.

Overhead, enclosed eaves stretch along the low edge of the Class A fire-resistant roof, designed to keep out embers blown in from a nearby wildfire. The windows are dual-paned and tempered.

“So if one of them was to break, the other could still survive,” Wright said.

The house’s siding and shutters are made of fiber cement board, covered in stucco all the way to the base of the structure.

“The entire facade of this is non-combustible.”

A vinyl fence surrounds the house, but it is connected to the structure by a five-foot metal gate. That way, Wright explained, even if the vinyl fence were to catch fire, it wouldn’t act as a connective wick.

Wright stressed the importance of all the safety components working together, noting that when every home on a block adheres to fire-prepared standards, the entire neighborhood becomes safer. In this sense, wildfire resilience differs from other weather- and climate-related hazards.

“Unlike rain, wind, hail, simply doing the upgrades to one home, while important, is not enough,” Wright said. “The adjacent properties begin to affect the wildfire risk of these homes. And so the collective action across the entire development is what fundamentally changes the risk profile of this place.”

Even nearby homes built decades ago will benefit, as a fire moving through the surrounding oaklands is less likely to ignite one of the fire-ready homes and trigger a structure-to-structure conflagration.