LA Wildfires: How To Protect YOUR Home, Build Fire Rated House

Jeff Ostroff offers advice on protecting your home from massive Los Angeles wildfires like the January fires that destroyed the Pacific Palisades in 2025. You will learn what you should do, and not do around your property to ensure that your house will survive a wildfire with embers raining down.

Houses that survived the Pacific Palisades wildfire will be analyzed to determine why they survived while every house around them burned down, and how their passive house-building techniques allowed them to survive the fire. You will learn how you can apply that to your house. You will also learn about improvements you can make to your own house to prevent embers from ever getting inside your house and starting a fire during a brush fire. You will also learn what to look for in designing your new house if you have to start from scratch in what the best standards are to build your house to, for it to survive any fire.

Read FEMA publication: "Guidance on the design and construction of eaves, overhangs, and soffits in wildfire zones for new and existing buildings":
https://firesafemarin.org/wp-content/uploads/fema-homebuilders-guide-to-construction-in-wildfire-zones.pdf

Read the Passive House Brochure from the International Passive House Association:
https://www.passivehouse-international.org/index.php?page_id=70

Fire Safe Marin is a great resourceful site from Marin County, Read their Harden You Home menus articles:
https://firesafemarin.org/

00:00 Introduction to protecting your house from wildfires
02:01 Urban sprawl into dangerous Santa Ana windy mountains
03:45 LEarning what catches fire first on a house
04:21 Why Tom Hank's house survived the fire, but $83 million house next door did not
04:51 Austin Russel's 83 million dollar mansion burnt down
08:59 Fire entry points into the $83 million mansion that caused it to burn down
14:30 Protecting your house, roof, soffits from wildfires and embers
15:10 Fire and Ember testing different roof soffit designs
16:36 FEMA's Home Builder's Guide To Construction in Wildfire Zones
18:27 Tips on fire-resistant roofs
23:27 fire resistant windows and doors
26:32 Passive Home design house in Pacific Palisades survived the fire
30:49 5 guidelines for fireproof passive house
32:04 Tips for building a fire-resistant new house