Enforcement of fire safety code is big question
Blog note: this article references a grand jury report.
PARADISE — The Camp Fire put pressure on local officials to figure out how to best reduce the fire risk of vegetation near homes and roads.
Now, the town of Paradise is looking to implement additional requirements on fire-safe landscaping, or defensible space. Town council members voted in a meeting Tuesday night to require residents to clear vegetation from around their homes, their roads and their neighbors’ homes.
The priority was identified in the town’s long-term recovery vision plan hashed out earlier this summer. John Messina, Paradise fire chief, developed and introduced the ordinance.
“That 1 percent fire, that Camp Fire, there’s little defensible space can do. But it does reduce risk for the normal, 99 percent fire,” Messina said. “The only positive with the Camp Fire is that a lot of that vegetation has been reduced, and we’re starting from scratch. But it’s coming.”
The areas leveled by the Camp Fire have grown weeds and grasses. That can be dangerous to neighbors, visitors and residents because of the vegetation’s fire hazard, Messina said. It will become an especially big challenge next spring, when the winter rains will usher in a mostly uncontrolled rebirth of green on vacant lots.
Fire-safe landscaping is key in fire-prone residential areas, where flames can go from home to home. It helps firefighters defend a home in the case of a fire and can reduce insurance rates.
“If we want to have insurance in Paradise, we just have to be fire safe,” said town council member Steve Crowder.
Residents in areas with high fire risk are already required by state law to keep a fire break of 100 feet around their homes, which broadly means they must keep trees pruned. That provides them with a less-combustible area called defensible space in case of approaching flames.
The new ordinance in Paradise adds nuance to the state code to prepare the town for years of vacant lots. On some points, it gives the fire chief discretion to decide what is proper fuel reduction. The ordinance passed unanimously but some of the language of the text will have to be cleaned up.
One of the requirements would ask residents to manage vegetation that may encroach not only on their own defensible space, but on their neighbors’ defensible space, within 30 feet. That partly addresses the question of who is responsible for overgrown vegetation on empty lots near standing homes or homes under construction.
The other major addition to the code would require residents to clear vegetation on their property if it is near streets and driveways, too. Messina said his crews had issues going down private roads during the Camp Fire.
But the requirements can only achieve so much on paper. Council members were concerned about enforcement, which Messina said is difficult to do at scale.
”We were doing it in the past; we weren’t very aggressive, and when we got to abatement, the process just stopped,” Messina told the town council. “Ideally, we wouldn’t have to do enforcement. As long as they’re reducing vegetation, we are mostly happy … there’s a lot of education that has to happen.”
The Butte County Fire Safe Council has been distributing more educational materials in the past month.
”Defensible space is the name of the game,” said Ward Habriel, the president of the Paradise Garden Club who’s also involved with the Fire Safe Council. “Our fire chief needs the authority to enforce that.”
The town of Paradise has already added one staff member in code enforcement and may add more resources. Lauren Gill, town manager, said the town has also been sending out letters to property owners who are not managing their vegetation properly.
It’s unclear how residents will be able to meet these requirements, especially those who have moved away. The Butte County Fire Safe Council and the U.S. Department of Agriculture are setting up programs to help residents, especially the elderly and disabled, manage the fire risk on their properties.
The issue of combustible material near roads was pointed out in this year’s Butte County grand jury report, which went over lessons from the Camp Fire. The report found that it was critical to keep vegetation away from evacuation routes, especially in communities that had only one road out. It recommended local authorities clear the vegetation by next spring.
In response, the town of Paradise said it received support from the Alliance for Workforce Development in August to add workers to its crews removing vegetation along the right of way in town, including evacuation routes. The hazardous trees burned by the Camp Fire will be removed by a contractor funded partly through the Federal Emergency Management Agency. The town has not yet started that contract.
Butte County’s Public Works Department said it would not be able to implement the recommendation because of budget constraints. In an Aug. 22 response to the grand jury report, staff said it would be “not reasonable” to clear all the vegetation in fire-prone areas along the 300 miles of roads considered evacuation routes before April. It would take five years to make progress toward that goal.
Butte County has begun to clear burned trees from the public right-of-way in Centerville, with funding help from FEMA. It will contract out the work in the entire region in phases in the next couple years.
September 11, 2019
Chico Enterprise-Record
By Camille Von Kaenel
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