Christian Science Monitor: ‘As California’s wildfire risks grow, are home builders getting the message?’

In a recent article, the Christian Science Monitor incorporated a quote from a 2013 interview with Dominik Kulakowski, associate professor of geography at Clark University. Here, an expert from the recent article: “With a historic drought and high temperatures, California is seeing longer and deadlier wildfire seasons — but the threat has not deterred developers from rebuilding homes in wilderness areas most prone to fires. … ” ‘We are increasingly building our homes … in fire-prone ecosystems,’ Dominik Kulakowski, an associate professor of geography at Clark University in Worcester, Mass., told The Christian Science Monitor in 2013. Doing that ‘in many of the forests of the Western US … is like building homes on the side of an active volcano.’ “The threat of fire has not diminished the thirst for development in wilderness, some analysts say, because the developers are not expected to shoulder the cost of firefighting — and the demand for housing in these areas is too high to ignore.”