Fireproof house? The couple's fireproof home survives the Pacific Palisades fire. Here's what the homeowners installed

LOS ANGELES – Michael Kovac and his wife Karina Maher moved into a 1950s house in the Pacific Palisades in the Los Angeles area in 2002.

They said they dismantled the existing house, donated the parts to Habitat for Humanity and built their current home.

Both Kovac and Maher are enthusiastic environmentalists and Kovac's architectural firm, Kovac Studio, specializes in hillside homes and environmental design.

They used their home as a project to research sustainable systems and wildfire resilience.

Here are the specific fire protection features used in their home, as described by Kovac:

“So we have fiber cement cladding that is extremely fire-resistant. We have a very high performance Class A commercial roof. We have a green roof that is very fire resistant. We have commercial glazing and insulated glass that prevents radiant heat from getting out.” With the windows and lighting the house from the inside and the back of the house, we were always afraid that a fire would come from the bottom of the hill, which it did was the case. “That’s why we installed a fire-retardant Phos-Chek system that we could call and activate,” explained Kovac.

They said their home is LEED Platinum certified. LEED stands for Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design.

Kovac and Maher said their home survived because of these fire-resistant features.

“Seeing that all of our friends’ and neighbors’ houses have disappeared is brutal,” Kovac said.

They hope to highlight ways others can protect their homes in fire-prone areas.

“I think people's reactions and insights are lagging behind science, so I think science warned us about this a long time ago and we're on an exponential curve. Things will continue to happen beyond our imagination, so we have to look.” “We have to face the reality and prepare for it,” Maher said.

“The good news is – we can do it. I mean, architecturally as a construction industry, there are no very expensive ways to rebuild so that something like this doesn't happen again,” Kovac said.