7.3.3 Flash Fiction #3: Pyro-Resistors

The Pine Hills Fire, Cuyamaca Rancho State Park, December 7th 2030

Standing some twenty or more feet tall on a South-facing slope, though scorched and still smouldering, several hundred Coulter, Jeffrey, Sugar, and other pines, which had been planted two decades prior, had largely persisted through the wildfire. Their outline obscured by the still billowing airborne bi-products of a blaze that some had speculated would deliver the final blow for their biome, the conifers were a testament to the combustible epoch of their ancestral origin. As real-time data spanning every- known fire metric streamed to his tablet, though attending a conference some miles away, chief ranger Jack was up-to-speed with events, and relieved to see that, at least as fire-hardy as the tree species about it, his cabin would be there on his return. Although its deeply furrowed heat-reflective synthetic-bark exterior plating made it look a little odd on the outside, its grace under conflagration pressure had ingratiated it to him. Turning his attention away from his tablet and to a speaker who had taken to the stage, Jack smiled at the thought that his much-loved forest home would, quite literally, ‘live’ to see another day.

>Continue to chapter 7 [part IV] here.

The thesis is also available in PDF format, downloadable in several parts on Academia and Researchgate.

Note that figures have been removed from the digital version hosted on this site, but are included in the PDFs available at the links above.

Citation: Sterry, M. L., (2018) Panarchistic Architecture: Building Wildland-Urban Interface Resilience to Wildfire through Design Thinking, Practice and Building Codes Modelled on Ecological Systems Theory. PhD Thesis, Advanced Virtual and Technological Architecture Research [AVATAR] group, University of Greenwich, London.