“When you have a firestorm, it won’t matter if it’s tile or shake. It all burns down. Moot point.”
That’s true. But the people in my neighborhood were scared that the firestorm would be caused by one of those old shake-roof houses. Any little thing could start them burning. So, if there was a firestorm a distance away, and one of the embers blew into our ‘hood, it would be much more likely to start a raging firestorm if it landed on the shake roof next door than if those folks had installed a tile roof. I guess that was the point, really… when your neighbor’s shake roof becomes a firestorm, it puts your house in danger.
Many of our neighbors used to put a sprinkler on their roof on the 4th of July. It was like air defence for bottle rockets.
