Rising From the Ashes

By Brian Shedden. BSS®, Principal, Entuitive

If you think that building sustainably is expensive now, just wait until you don’t build sustainably. Cast your mind back to May 2016: do you remember what happened? Dateline Fort McMurray. The costliest insured loss in

Canadian history was the result of the wildfire that literally burned many parts of the town right to the ground.

Remember those scenes on the news? Tremendous walls of flames that actually jumped rivers forcing the evacuation of the entire population of 67,000 with very little notice.

Did you know that here in 2022, they are still rebuilding from that devastation?

Now, what does this have to do with building science? Well, think about this for a moment:

• Fort McMurray is located within the boreal forest, a forest that occupies over 50 per cent of the Canadian land mass and runs from coast to coast.

• Forest fires have occurred since the beginning of time and are usually ignited by natural means such as lightning. • The term “wildfire”, a relatively recent addition to the

Lexicon, has been tagged to those fires that speedily encroach on cities or towns, raising alarms and triggering emergency response plans. • Most of the losses were to single-family homes built under

Part 9 of the Building Code. • Most of the homes included wood framing, vinyl siding, asphalt shingles and vinyl framed windows, all of which offer no resistance to fire.

As building science specialists and building envelope consultants, each of these points above are relevant to our area of practice. Now, we could do the minimum and simply design to Code, but remember, Code is not the gold standard; it is essentially the worst thing you are permitted to build, legally. It is imperative that we consider all of the factors that may affect our projects over their normal service life. For example, if you were building in a coastal setting, failing to factor in rising sea levels would be a recipe for disaster. Similarly, if you are building in the middle of one of the world’s largest forests, combustibility or fire resistance demand that we design in a manner that acknowledges the real threat potentials, and a design that does will be one of the biggest sustainability initiatives you could incorporate into the project. Let’s look at the cost side of this equation. In one 214-unit condominium complex that was devasted by the fire, the costs to rebuild far outstripped the replacement value covered under insurance, leaving many of the unit owners not only homeless as a result of the fire, but continually homeless, as in being unable to cover the additional costs required to rebuild. As you know, here in Alberta, our insurance rates have sky-rocketed in recent years, due in no small measure to the enormous losses sustained by the insurance companies in Fort Mac. And those rates will continue to be high until we take measures to mitigate losses in the future. So, in the big scheme of things, the premiums associated with utilizing fire rated cladding, metal roofing and metal framed windows and doors are really peanuts compared to real and present downside of not having designed and built in accordance with the demands of the environment in which we are working. If your client fails to understand the importance of this, you have a choice to make. You can either be part of the problem or part of the solution. I think that’s a pretty easy choice. n