In the unprecedented wind-driven fires of January, a fusillade of embers flew from burning hillside brush to neighborhoods, igniting houses and any fencing and furniture around them that would burn. Those flames spread to adjacent houses, and the winds propelled millions more embers through the air to more houses and yards. Whether more firefighters on the ground or water-spraying helicopters in the air or reservoirs could have staved off destruction, one thing is overwhelmingly clear to fire scientists: The time to start fighting fire is before it begins.
Toward that end, the California Legislature, in late 2020, passed Assembly Bill 3074, mandating that homes or occupied structures in areas most severely at risk of fire establish five feet of defensible space around them. The state already requires clearance of brush and dead leaves within 100 feet of houses. But this bill called for creating a zone of zero to five feet — or Zone Zero — around a house. This doesn’t guarantee a home won’t burn, but it offers the best defense a homeowner may have against embers headed their way.
Here’s the problem: The 2020 law has yet to go into effect. The state’s Board of Forestry and Fire Protection was charged with writing the rules and regulations for Zone Zero by January 2023. The board has had four years to work on this, and it’s two years past the deadline.
At a time when fires are increasingly intense, that’s not just ridiculous, that’s irresponsible. Why the holdup? How long does it take to decide that homeowners really shouldn’t have wooden fences or combustible shrubs within five feet of their homes? According to Christine McMorrow, a spokesperson for Cal Fire, the board is expediting its process. But there’s a lot for board members to consider: “New Zone Zero rules will have financial implications for people so the focus right now is on what mitigations matter the most,” she said last week. The board also wants to provide an education plan to help people understand why they can’t have that wood fence. “We always want to push education over citation,” she said.
The biggest obstacle, apparently, is figuring out the specifics of what to allow and what to forbid. What shouldn’t be allowed on a deck? What about allowable materials for the deck itself? Are doormats forbidden? Must all window frames be metal? Still, it shouldn’t take four years to put forth rules. No matter how politically unpopular, these are decisions that need to be made. State law already requires houses in fire-prone areas to be built with more fire-resistant materials and have ember-resistant vents. But the Zone Zero rules could also weigh in on materials, such as siding on the house.
Cal Fire also already has recommendations on all this. (You don’t have to wait for a state law to create your own Zone Zero, by the way.) Basically nothing combustible is advised: no mulch or bark; no flammable furniture and planters. Use pavers, gravel or concrete.
The Board of Forestry and Fire Protection is expected to discuss the rules at its next meeting, in March, but not decide on them. Whenever the rules are decided, they still have to go through the state’s rulemaking process and be put out for public comment.
It’s so obvious that this process is taking too long. Gov. Gavin Newsom issued an executive order on Feb. 6 instructing the board to draft rules and put them out for public comment within 45 days of his order and complete the formal rulemaking process by Dec. 31 of this year. Even that is too long a wait; rebuilding will be well under way by then in the burned areas of Los Angeles County.
The rules, once formalized, will apply to new construction first; existing properties will have to be retrofitted within a few years. The costs in materials surely will be far cheaper than rebuilding a house that has been burned to the ground.
And these rules can help provide protection for an entire neighborhood. The more houses with defensible space, the more fortified the entire neighborhood. “It’s a community ignition and community structure problem,” said longtime fire scientist Jack Cohen. Of course, even a neighborhood with perfect Zone Zero adherence will still be susceptible to fire, but the odds of its structures surviving will go up.
If ever there were a time to put Zone Zero regulations into effect, it’s now, when thousands of owners whose homes were burned rush to rebuild or sell to others who will rebuild. Widespread implementation of Zone Zero could have an enormous impact on the fire safety of swaths of Los Angeles County.
However, even while the state’s rulemaking drags on, local jurisdictions can pass their own Zone Zero regulations. There are a number of areas throughout the state that have already mandated Zone Zero rules. Los Angeles County and L.A. city could do the same.
If state rules are not in effect when homeowners rebuild, they should still seriously consider rebuilding with a defensible space of at least five feet around their homes. Giving up favored materials and plants that are combustible is the smallest of sacrifices to allow a home and a neighborhood a fighting chance the next time embers are raining down on L.A.
