When a wildfire forced Peter and Story Kornbluth to evacuate their Santa Barbara home in May 2009, the last thing Peter saw was the bougainvillea catching fire. The next morning, the hilltop house was gone. Despite the enormous loss, “there was never any question in my mind that I was coming back here,” Peter says. With only the concrete garage left standing, he thought, Clearly that’s the way to build.
Instead of rebuilding a wood-frame house, the couple decided to use a lightweight, fire-resistant system, called SCIP, of concrete panels around a foam core. They added steel windows with double-pane, tempered glass to withstand wildfire temperatures as well.