Fire Marshal Protects Home from 100 MPH Winds and Ember Storms

Speaker 0: Okay. So my name is Rich Schneider. I was a thirty six year career fire marshal and fire captain with the fire service. Once I retired, I was working on my home, and I used wildfire defense mesh, as part of my company that I'm home hardening. Sorry. I know. This is what Eddie Once I retired, I started a company where I would do wildfire risk and mitigation and followed up with addressing that mitigation with different different home hardening techniques including the use of wildfire defense mesh for vents and under porches and and decks. In my own home, I installed wildfire defense mesh underneath my deck. Wasn't thinking about fire because I'm not actually in a fire zone. I'm just outside of it. I did it because I didn't want leaves and debris and rodents getting underneath my deck. Come to find out two years later, the Eaton fire roared through my neighborhood. My neighbors homes were burning. My home suffered, substantial damage, but the deck was amazing. I looked at the deck and the wildfire mesh had stopped those embers, and they were stacked up right next to the the mesh and nothing got underneath my deck. So when I look when I was looking sorry. When I was looking for solutions for home hardening, you know, one of the key components of home hardening is vents. And 90% of the structure loss in a wildfire is from the embers hitting the house. So in addressing vents there are different manufacturers on the market but there are key things to look at was the look of the vent, the ease of installation and probably most important that people don't think about is that net free area and being able to ventilate the attic. We still need to provide ventilation and looking at wildfire defense mesh and seeing its success rate in Australia. Yeah, it was kind of a no brainer and the the fact that you can, you know, customize event and have that little minimal impact on that free net free area was important. Sure. So the night of the Eaton fire, I was at home with my wife and my grandson, and I was actually working on a PowerPoint on wildfire risk and mitigation for structures at the time. And the Eaton fire broke out about a mile and a half north of my house. And we had winds that were 70 miles an hour sustained with gusts to a 100. And when I discovered the fire was burning, I went outside, looked up, and I saw the smoke coming over our neighborhood, which tells me the fire's gonna come this way. So I evacuated all of my neighbors. I got my wife and grandson in the car, sent them out, and I started getting garden hoses out and figuring out what's going to happen. And sure enough, two doors away, a fire started next to a fence, quickly got into the garage, got into the house, and then I had ember cast. Millions of these red hot bright embers bombarding my neighbor's houses, including my own. And at that point, I just thought, man, I don't know if we're we're we're there's no fire service responding because we're so far into the incident that the fire department's already been deployed. Any resources were gonna come from further and further away. In fact, the first resource to show up was about an hour and a half later, and it came from 40 miles away. So, yeah, it was I didn't think our neighborhood was gonna was gonna make it. So during so during that fire, you know, my nephew was in the backyard and he's not a firefighter. And as I'm talking to him, there are embers just hitting everywhere. And all I could think about was my vents, you know, my attic. I didn't think about the deck at the time. It wasn't until the next day that I saw the embers that were stacked up against the mesh. And they hit the mesh and they fell right down to the ground. And when I went to get remediation work done on my house, I had about a $100,000 worth of damage to my house. When they crawled up into the attic to look at the insulation and see what got in there, it was very little, embers had gotten in there. A lot of smoke, but they were they were pretty you know, they were kinda confused about the fact that there was no debris in the attic, and that's because it was the mesh had stopped those embers. It was amazing. Well, I definitely sleep better at night. My concern now is my neighbors. We can we can fight we can we can fight the embers. We can we can definitely harden a home from embers. The difficult part is if your neighbor's home is within, you know, 30 feet and their home is burning, that's a lot of heat for a long time. And what we saw in the Eaton fire, those those 9,000 structures and and the the the structures that were lost in the in the Palisades fire, That was structure to structure spread. And that's hard to defend against. So now my challenge is getting with my neighbors on each side of me and making sure that when the embers fall into their yard and when the embers hit their houses that their house doesn't catch on fire. It is a community solution. One person doing what's right. If your neighbors don't, their homes can still set your house on fire. So it starts with you and then you work your way out. So working with wildfire defense mesh was was so easy. I had met the owner James probably ten years ago at a fire prevention conference and he was so easy to talk to and it just made sense. I mean it was I was not was was trying to think of a word here. Sorry. At first, I was curious as to how simple the solution was because over the years, in the last twenty years, when we when we discovered home hardening was so important and these different manufacturers were coming out with different vents that had baffles in them and different which worked very, very well. This was simple and it was almost too simple, but it works. And so that was the amazing part for me. It's something that a homeowner can do. It's cost effective. It's customizable. You know, when you've got certain vents and you have to order from a manufacturer and they have to manufacture a vent that's perfect. If you didn't if you didn't measure right, it may not work. And you've got time and money. But this is mesh and you customize it to your vent and it works. So we all saw what happened in Southern California in 2025. I don't think we need to try to convince people anymore. You know we saw what we saw and the different states are now requiring that the vents be protected. Insurance companies are requiring that vents be protected and homeowners are discovering the importance of vents being protected. Gonna pause. What was the question? Yep. So now more than ever, we need to get it done. And once you come to the realization you have to do it, the next step is how do we get this done? Well, you can hire a home hardening company that can come in and and do what needs to be done, or you can do it as a homeowner. But it's important that it be done and it be done with a tested proven system. We had a client I don't know if you want to talk about on this one or the next one, I'll say it twice. We had a client that we went out to their house and said, hey. You need ember resistant vents. We can retrofit with the mesh. That weekend, his son-in-law came into town. They went to a big box store, and they bought just regular hardware mesh, galvanized mesh that you get at a hardware store. And the son spent the whole weekend doing that and when the insurance company came in to see if they did it, insurance company shook their head and said no that's not a proven material. That's not tested. It needs to be a tested listed material. Let me make sure I see my logo. Okay. So before working with wildfire defense mesh, you know, we're always looking for those solutions to protect those vents to keep the embers from getting in. And there are companies that have come out and have tested and listed vents to retrofit into the house. With some of the challenges I was running to with clients is, you know, the cost is one thing. Of course, it's usually everyone's first concern, but doing some of these vents, the retrofits involved taking out the existing vent, breaking out some stucco sometimes which you know labor wise that gets expensive and now you're talking about trying to patch some some areas. And the other part that people don't always think about is the impact it has on the ventilation to the attic. We have to have ventilation in our attic. If we don't, we we can have mold, mildew, the energy efficiency of the attic. So we need to keep that air flowing. With wildfire defense mesh, it has minimal impact or the least impact on that net free area. It's customizable. You're basically taking an existing vent, you're removing the quarter inch mesh and you're installing the sixteenth inch mesh. So cost wise, it's, you know, a fraction of the cost of buying a vent. You don't have to order it and wait for it to come and hope you got the size right because you're customizing it right there. So those are all things that were really you know no brainers for me. That was it's really the most cost effective. It's it needs to be effective. It needs to be efficient and wildfire defense mesh hits both of those. Sure. So my name is Rich Schneider. I'm a retired fire captain, fire marshal, thirty six years in the fire service. I served on state board committees for the WUI code. I have a background in wildfire fighting wildfires as a captain and also developing wildfire codes for protecting homes. Once I retired, I started a company called Foothill what's my name? I'm just kidding. After after retirement, I started a company called Foothill Fire Risk Solutions and we started out with just doing risk fire and risk assessments of structures. A lot of it has to do with education. Do people really understand that they're threatened? So we go out, do the wildfire risk risk. We go out we do the wildfire risk and develop a mitigation plan to address that risk. The second part of the company the Foothill Fire Safe, the sister company Foothill Fire Safe Maintenance is a mitigation company and this is a professional contractor who does high end work very detailed and once he identifies what the risks are from Foothill Fire Solutions, he can mitigate that risk and looks very professional. So some of the challenges in dealing with our clients with you know is particularly with vents. Venting of the attic and the foundation were the look of the vent some of these new vents you know definitely changes the look of the house and then the cost of the vent and the labor to install it and then the effect of that net free area. With wildfire defense mesh, it's very cost effective. The materials are much less than buying a new vent. You don't have to wait for ordering it and the vent looks the same. In fact, I had a client we finished the job and he brought me into the his carport and he says you missed an area. I said really? And he showed me the vents in his garage. He says you forgot these and I said no we actually did it and I showed it to him and he's like oh wow they look the same. Yeah that's the nice thing is we don't change the look of the house and that's really important to homeowners that they don't change the look of their house and they're still protected. So as an installer, it's really easy to work with Wildfire Defense Mesh. They have a website, easy to order from. They have your code for your business when you when you check out. There's a discount code for contractors. Their warehouse their warehouse is in in LA, and the shipping it's it's one stop shop the same day you order, depending on when you order, but usually the same day that the shipment's going up. Or you could even go down if you're in Southern California, can go pick it up. So one of the first times I used it was on my own house with my deck in the backyard. Now typically with when we're dealing with clients we're we're trying to protect the underside of a deck to keep leaves and debris and then eventually embers from getting under there and setting that on fire. You have to enclose it to the ground. So we were doing things like enclosing it with a a noncombustible wall. Well, again, it changed the look. It costs more. It just doesn't provide ventilation under there. So with my deck, I decided to use the wildfire defense mesh. And I was impressed at how easy it was to use. And I was doing this to keep rodents out. I wasn't thinking about embers because I'm not exactly into the wildfire area so I thought. But it was so easy to use. It's rigid. You can just feeling it. It's a quality screening stainless steel and yeah it looked beautiful when it's done which what the clients are looking for. I'm installing it to make sure they're protected. The homeowners are looking for something that looks good so wildfire defense mesh hits both of those points. So as a business, to have a roll of wildfire defense mesh on one of our trucks, When I get to a house and I'm home hardening, maybe we missed a vent in the calculations or vents are different shapes. I don't have to order specific vents for every vent and wait for them to arrive and then install them. And oftentimes the install, you know, change definitely changes the look of the house on some of those. All I have to have is a roll of mesh on the house. We actually had a client where it was only two vents. It was their foundation vents and we went out to do the risk assessment. It's two vents and there are people like, okay, yeah, we want to go ahead and get this done. And we're like, we're already here. I got the mesh. We took a half an hour. We cut the mesh, cut the old mesh out, put the new one in. It was a once it was a one stop deal. We didn't have to, you know, come up with contracts and order, and we did it on the site. So just by having extra mesh with you know, in your own warehouse or on your trucks, when you run into problems in the field, you've got the materials there and can quickly address any issue that comes up in the field. So that was that's that's been a big big part of it. Handyman, people that are get called out for the smaller jobs. The other one that I that I think is is a good business model would be roofers. You know, as codes for as as states start requiring venting and insurance companies are now requiring venting in order to maintain your insurance. You have to have that venting done. And people are now aware of it after the fires in LA. They know about venting. There's a lot of education going on. Where do they go for this? That's that's the challenge. So how do you market yourself and be the one you know the answer to that? Now roofing contractors people when they call for a roof you're already going out there you're on the roof you're putting a new roof in get the vents done and you can be that contractor that comes in and says hey you know these are required by your insurance company, required by the state. While we're here, let's just take care of it for you. And it can be an added service for a roofing company. It doesn't take a lot of training. A lot of roofers are already doing sheet metal work for flashings. It's as easy as working with flashings. And it's just an added service and it's a feel good service because you're protecting your client. You do. Do we