Mother Jones – September 01, 2019

SEPTEMBER / OCTOBER 2019 | MOTHER JONES 45

somely from it. A former car racer—he was
recently inducted into the International
Drag Racing Hall of Fame—he estimates
that his company, Palomar Builders, has
built some 3,000 houses. It’s been a good
run: Today Allen owns a hilltop residence
he bought for about $3 million in Tiburon,
California, a wealthy enclave overlooking
San Francisco Bay; a condo at Troon North
Golf Club, in the shadow of Arizona’s Pin-
nacle Peak; a new 1,000-square-foot apart-

ment on the 17th floor of the Ritz-Carlton

in Honolulu, towering over Waikiki Beach;

and a 2,500-square-foot house in the first

subdivision he built in Redding.

Dozens of houses that his company built

were destroyed in the Carr Fire. Several

were in a subdivision called Salt Creek

Heights, a collection of ridgetop lots on

Redding’s western edge. Among them was

the development’s model home, which is

where Allen and I meet on a recent af-

ternoon. The 2,400-square-foot model,

which sells for about $940,000, has been

rebuilt since the fire.

What’s most striking about Allen’s com-

pany isn’t how hard it was hit by the fire.

It’s how hard it’s cranking out houses in

the wui again. Several of its Redding buyers

under contract for houses at the time of

the fire backed out, Allen estimates, but in

the months since, many more people have

bought in. When Palomar began selling 14

houses in a newly developed section of Salt

Creek Heights in early May, it sold nine in

just a week. Regulations haven’t been a con-

cern. When I ask if Allen has faced tougher

building restrictions since the fire, he an-

swers flatly, “Not really.”

Sitting in a front room of the model

home, beside a table set with a stack of busi-

ness cards and a bowl of mints, Allen looks

out a picture window facing northwest,

where the Carr Fire roared in. The once-

wooded hillsides are pocked with singed

stumps. Allen, wearing a black bomber

jacket, a black T-shirt, and jeans, figures the

land’s contours are now easier to admire.

“My opinion,” he says, “is it’s got more char-

acter to it than it did before.”

A Redding ordinance prohibits building

houses on slopes whose grade is greater

than 20 percent, primarily because the

steeper the slope, the faster fire scales it.

But the rules don’t ban building on the

ridges above steep inclines. The economic

incentive to build there is strong: Houses

high up have better views.

“For me, it was all about the view,” says

Renee Rand, a home health care executive

who bought a lot in Salt Creek Heights a

month after the Carr Fire. She needed a new

house because the fire burned down her

old one less than 24 hours after she evacu-

ated it. At Rand’s new house, the backyard

plunges into charred hills. She tells me she’s

tussling with Palomar over whether she or

the company will pay to clean up the black-

ened wood in the yard. (Allen says he can’t

recall this dispute, but if there’s a problem

he’s willing to fix it.) “I’m like, ‘This was your

lot,’” she says. “‘It burned before I bought it.

Will you remove it?’ But if they won’t, I will.

Or maybe I’ll just let it sit.”

the suburbanization of the wui didn’t just

happen. Years of deliberate policymaking

have encouraged and subsidized it. A 1978

California law makes

FEEL THE BURN

—Dave Gilson

California’s 2018

wildfires emitted 45.5

million metric tons of

carbon dioxide.

In 2016, the state’s

electricity industry

produced 42.7 million

tons of greenhouse

gases.

1/3 of all houses in the

United States are in

the wildland-urban

interface (wui).

The size of California’s

wui grew 20% be-

tween 1990 and 2010.

(continued on page 64)

Thanks in no small part to the Camp Fire—the costliest wildfire ever

recorded—2018 was the United States’ most expensive fire season.

WILDFIRE LOSSES IN US

Overall losses (2018 dollars)

$20

$10

$25 billion

’00 ’01 ’02 ’03 ’04 ’05 ’06 ’07 ’08 ’09 ’10 ’11 ’12 ’13 ’14 ’15 ’16 ’17 ’18

$15

$5

$0

California’s 2018 fire season was its most destructive ever.

2,000

1,000

2,500

’00 ’01 ’02 ’03 ’04 ’05 ’06 ’07 ’08 ’09 ’10 ’11 ’12 ’13 ’14 ’15 ’16 ’17 ’18

1,500

500

0

AREA BURNED BY CALIFORNIA WILDFIRES

square miles

For sources, go to motherjones.com/wildfires.