The emails continually fill my inbox: Startups exclaiming they have engineered a solution to protect homes from wildfires. |
I’ve been pitched a system that monitors fires via satellite so it can automatically turn on water cannons when fire gets too close. Another offered high-tech speakers that homeowners can place around their home that blasts powerful but silent sound waves designed to disrupt the chemical process of combustion. |
One recent one was so outlandish, I couldn’t ignore it: |
An entrepreneur together with a former mayor of Malibu were appearing on Shark Tank to pitch a new system to literally lower an entire home into a subterranean vault when a wildfire approaches. |
Many fire officials and experts are optimistic we really can find part of the solution to California’s wildfire crisis in the proliferating world of home defense tech. But they also warn these wild ideas are often expensive as well as largely unproven. |
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Of course I tuned in to Shark Tank. |
“I know, this sounds like a magic trick,” entrepreneur Holden Forrest told the Sharks. |
“It sounds crazy,” investor and businesswoman Barbara Corcoran interjected. |
Nonetheless, Corcoran, who lost her Pacific Palisades home in the 2025 fires, invested $1 million in exchange for a 20% ownership stake in the company — on the condition that its first proof-of-concept home is her own. |
If you, like Corcoran, want to put down some serious money for exciting new tech, there are a few things you should know. |
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This kind of tech is often significantly more expensive than proven, less flashy approaches to reduce the risk of your home burning — such as covering vents with mesh so embers can’t sneak into the home and multipaned windows that are less likely to shatter in the extreme heat, allowing flames and embers to enter. |
For example, Forrest expects the retractable homes to cost around $1,000 per square foot. The company hopes to eventually get it down to around $400. |
For reference, Palisades fire survivors expect to pay around $800 per square foot to rebuild, while Eaton fire survivors expect to pay just shy of $600. It’s also more than a new series of fire-resilient homes in the Palisades that incorporate both tried-and-true and flashy new tech, sitting around $700. |
Fire safety experts also warn that some of this technology can encourage dangerous behavior such as ignoring evacuation orders and staying to defend homes. For example, even when water cannon companies insist their technology can function autonomously, some homeowners nonetheless stay behind to operate them. |
Forrest rejected the idea that his technology, HiberTec Homes, would encourage homeowners to disobey evacuation orders — he argued the opposite. The trust that comes with knowing your home will survive actually decreases the likelihood residents will stay behind, he told the Sharks. |
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Many of the new home protection systems remain unproven, in part because it takes time for researchers to evaluate them. There are three steps to that: |
First, scientists head to the lab to see whether the physics behind the tech works as expected in controlled tests. |
Second, they investigate individual homes that used the tech in major fires to piece together whether the same physics held together in the chaos and immense power of real-world fires. |
Third, they determine whether what they saw in the lab and on the ground translates to a reduced risk at scale. To do this researchers survey thousands of structures that faced wildfires and compare the percentage with the tech that survived with the percentage without the tech that survived. |
If you live in a fire-prone area, and you understand the risks and uncertainties of new tech and have money to spare, by all means, build the wildfire bunker of your dreams — just email me an invite to check it out. |
Otherwise, Cal Fire maintains a list of the less flashy solutions that have already gone through their scientific paces. |
More recent wildfire news |
After months of fierce debate between fire officials and residents in fire-prone areas, California released a new “Zone Zero” proposal outlining landscaping restrictions within 5 feet of people’s homes. Unlike previous proposals, many Southern Californians seem to be … OK with this one. |
California regulators determined State Farm “delayed, underpaid, and buried policyholders in red tape.” The Department of Insurance may now seek to suspend the company’s license. Meanwhile, the U.S. Justice Department filed a brief supporting 60 fire victims who are suing State Farm and other insurers, my colleague Laurence Darmiento reports. |
Survivors of the 2023 Maui fires could start receiving their share of a $4-billion settlement with Hawaiian Electric, the state of Hawaii, Maui County and other defendants as early as June. However, few will break even, reports Stewart Yerton of Honolulu Civil Beat. Lawyers will get a slice for legal fees; the Internal Revenue Service may claw back as much as a third if Congress doesn’t resurrect a tax exemption for such settlements; and insurers who paid out claims will get 10% of the money. |
Oh — and this Saturday is Fire Service Day. There’s a good chance your local fire station will hold an open house, complete with fire equipment demos and maybe even free pancakes. |
A few last things in climate news |
Tom Steyer, a Wall Street prodigy turned billionaire who made a portion of his money off investments in coal-fired power plants, is now trying to use that money to convince Californians he’s the best candidate on climate and energy affordability. Read my colleagues Ben Wieder and Hayley Smith’s full profile here. |
The last California-bound oil tanker to pass through the Strait of Hormuz before the Iran war reached the Port of Long Beach, my colleague Blanca Begert reports. After the ship finishes offloading its crude oil, California will have to manage a deficit of roughly 200,000 barrels of oil per day. |
The company that produces the widely used weedkiller Roundup promised to “provide a small thanks” to the Environmental Protection Agency administrator after the agency asserted it would not approve a label for the weedkiller warning it causes cancer, reports Sky Chadde of Investigate Midwest. The revelation came at a congressional hearing last week as the company seeks immunity in the Supreme Court. |
This is the latest edition of Boiling Point, a newsletter about climate change and the environment in the American West. Sign up here to get it in your inbox. And listen to our Boiling Point podcast here. |
For more wildfire news, follow @nohaggerty on X and @nohaggerty.bsky.social on Bluesky. |
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