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One year after the devastating wildfires, California is looking to create plant-free zones around homes in high-risk fire areas. Many people are resisting the Zone Zero regulations due to cost and inconvenience.
Following last January’s wildfires, a battle is raging over how to prevent future catastrophic fires in California, and whether new regulations could help homeowners get insured.
Although thousands of homes in Los Angeles exist in very high-fire zones, every neighborhood is different, which has some concerned about a one-size-fits-all law called Zone Zero, the newest iteration of California’s defensible space requirements.
Zone Zero is the area closest to a home’s perimeter, the space from zero to five feet. The goal of the new law is to create an ember-resistant defensible zone.
“I live in an urban, dense neighborhood, and they’re applying rural wildfire zone regulations to me. And the fire risks here and the conditions are not the same. They’re absolutely different. And I know from the scientists we’ve talked to, science shows that in Southern California, in wind-driven fires, homes burn not because of my hydrated vegetation, but because of embers and building vulnerabilities,” said Brentwood resident Thelma Waxman.
“It’s an extreme reaction that is completely unnecessary and misplaced, because to put the blame just on plants is insane,” said Yael Pardess, who lives in L.A.’s Mount Washington neighborhood.
Zone Zero regulations remain in a draft phase, but could require removing combustible materials adjacent to a structure, removing dead leaves and flammable plants from your yard, roof, and gutters, trimming overhanging branches to at least 10 feet from chimneys and maintaining space between trees and shrubs.
“The January wildfires almost a year ago really put a finer point on the need for Zone Zero, because you know, what we saw, of course, in the Palisades and Eaton fires, quite tragically, is what we call urban conflagration, where the fire came from outside the community, but then once inside the community, the fire was jumping from home to home, oftentimes connected by combustible material between the homes. So the focus since then has been, given just how intense that urban risk is, that was really on display with the LA wildfires — How do we get Zone Zero?” said Wade Crowfoot, California’s Natural Resources Secretary.
Thousands have engaged with the Board of Forestry, and the release of the final Zone Zero regulations has been pushed to the Spring. Once approved, homeowners would have three years to implement them. Enforcement would be through education and outreach, and local jurisdictions would be able to adopt their own rules.
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“The challenge for us in government is how do we come up with a policy that is as least restrictive as possible to respect people’s property rights and aesthetic needs and decisions while also taking the steps necessary to dramatically reduce fire risk? I really want to ground this in fire science, but it’s clear to me that just telling everyone to cut back all their plants within five feet of their homes, with no mention given of the location of the plant, the type of plant, the maintenance of the plant, all those kinds of things, seems a little over the top,” said California State Senator Ben Allen, who represents West L.A . and is also running for California Insurance Commissioner.
“The insurance industry shows up at every meeting and says, ‘No, everything must go. Everything must go.’ So who do they listen to? The scientists at UCLA, who advise me, or the insurance company that is holding California hostage?” said Waxman.
Ben Allen says we all have a mutual interest in lowering fire risk, and adds that the one aspect he’s sympathetic to the insurance industry on is that not enough people have taken the steps necessary to make their property fire safe.
But, following Zone Zero regulations won’t guarantee insurance. The Board of Forestry says Zone Zero will affect about 2 million structures, which is 17% of all structures in California.
For Yael Pardess, who’s lived in Mount Washington for almost thirty years and, like so many Angelenos, has stayed because of the beauty and wildlife so close to the second-largest city in the country, she says Zone Zero could force her to leave.
“These rules are so contra to our lives here, to our environment, to our birds, to the heat, to the shade. It doesn’t make any sense whatsoever, from an ecological point of view, and even from a safety point of view,” said Pardess.
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