| It's almost impossible for experts to piece together why certain homes burned — most of the evidence is ash. But in the aftermath of the Los Angeles fires, they are closely studying the homes still standing and searching for clues to how homeowners can cope with future wildfires. In some cases, homes were built with noncombustible materials such as stucco, brick or cement, long before California's building code took wildfires into account. In other instances, owners retrofitted their homes and cleared vegetation to prepare for the threat of a wildfire. When Mark Schoofs and Jorge Santana Corona decided in 2021 to build an addition onto their 1960s bungalow, they sought to make their home as fire-resistant as possible; nothing on the outside would be flammable. "When, not if, when a fire came here, we were going to be at risk," Schoofs said. The couple was already fire-wary. They had seen a small fire erupt in the mountains above them years earlier and, in a separate incident, had fled thick smoke from another fire when their daughter was a newborn. "Obviously, I certainly didn't think it'd ever be like this," he said. | 
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