I haven’t posted anything about the fires in California for a couple reasons –

a) Its California
2) I’m not there, I’m not an expert, and my opinion is worth all of what you pay for it
III) I doubt theres anyone reading this who, in that locale and environment, wouldnt have taken steps to increase their resilience against fire

But not all Californians are clueless volunteer/victims.

But Palisades Highlands father and son, Gene and Patrick Golling, credit the survival of their house—when most in the neighborhood perished—to a homemade water pump and their swimming pool.

Before evacuating, the pair used the water pump they’d bought last summer and directed 20,000-gallons of water from their swimming pool on to their home and the surrounding hillside.

Its an article about a couple guys who bought some homestead fire-fighting equipment and basically hosed their place down for several hours and came back to…their house.

Seems like every place worth livingi n out in California has a swimming pool. Why not transfer all that water to the roof of your house and the grounds around it?

There is no shortage of outfits online selling firefighting equipment for the DIY’er. And while fighting a forest fire on your own with no training is a recipe (extra crispy recipe, actually) for disaster I will completely understand the man who does in order to protect his home.

And, yes, when the sheriff shows up and tells you to evacuate or else … there may not be much you can do, but you can at least leave the hoses running and the pumps pumping like some sort of hydro-sentry-gun.

I’ve investigated this sort of stuff here and there over the years as I daydreamed moving to a nice quiet place in the sticks. Make no mistake…metal roofing, some type of reservoir, and a well designed network of hose connection points is definitely in the cards.

I’m surprised I haven’t seen more articles about people either beating the fires by tactical house construction design or water-projection defenses. Surely there’s gotta be a bunch of people, even in California, who saw the writing on the wall and invested in concrete shingles and water pumps. Perhaps the media doesnt want to encourage people to rely on something other than .gov for their safety. Or maybe no one noticed. Or maybe no one thinks it’s newsworthy. But, if it were me, I’d have had my pool plumbed to me eaves-mounted sprinkler system within the first week of building the place. But, easy to say since I’m not there.

Nonetheless, it is worth a trip through the internet to see whats available for when you do need to be your own basement-flooding, hose-dragging, ladder-monkey. 😉