Brush-Abatement Rules Fan Debate

TOPANGA CANYON —  Fire season was declared early this dry spring.

County firefighters came around sooner than usual too, strongly suggesting residents not only haul off dry brush and dead timber from around their homes, but prune or remove beloved pine trees, cut back the bougainvillea, and generally take more precautions than ever before to protect their homes from wildfire.

They are being given 30 days to perform the work or face a $200 “administrative penalty,” another $231 “abatement enforcement” fee, and perhaps hundreds of dollars in additional charges if the county has to come out and do the dirty work. If a homeowner is really stubborn, the district attorney could always file misdemeanor charges.

The firefighters put it more gently, of course, but that in a nutshell was the message.

“No question, people here love the firemen,” Topanga resident Rosi Dagit said. “But this set off a lot of bad feelings.”

In fact, the howl over pruning back trees grew so loud that fire officials extended the deadline for tree trimming until fall, even though the fire season will have ended by then.

Nearly four years after the Topanga-Malibu brush fire destroyed 323 homes and 112 other structures in the Santa Monica Mountains, and after another fire there claimed six homes last fall, fire officials are stepping up enforcement of brush-abatement rules throughout Los Angeles County.

Armed with new, more detailed regulations and “monetary incentives for self-compliance”--more commonly known as fines--they are trying harder than ever to fireproof those parts of the county where urban sprawl meets acres of parched chaparral.

For the sake of residents and firefighters alike.

“I don’t blame the firemen,” said Dagit, a 10-year canyon resident whose home is in the densely wooded Fernwood section of Topanga and covered with bougainvillea. “I wouldn’t want to come in here either” during a fire, she added.

As more and more harried Angelenos have sought respite in the lush foothills and canyons that crease the county, the issue of what fire officials call “urban-interface fire safety” has grown increasingly salient. And regulations requiring the removal of brush, trees and other fire fuels from around homes have been growing more stringent.

The devastating 1993 fires, however, persuaded officials that still more needed to be done.

Last year, a county brush-clearance office was set up to coordinate abatement efforts. Then this January, new and stricter codes went into effect.

It used to be that only native growth had to be trimmed back from buildings to prevent the rapid spread of fire; ornamental vegetation was omitted from the clearance requirements. Now, even decorative plants are among the flora subject to restrictions in height, spacing and proximity to structures. The new regulations are a complicated web of measurements that vary according to the type of plant, size, plant’s position on a slope, and whether it burns easily (such as eucalyptus) or is flame-resistant (such as succulents).

The start of fire season depends on location; it can be as early as April or May in the High Desert, and as late as July in the coastal regions. But this year, regardless of location, fire season is starting a month early because of the winter’s short rainy season and despite last week’s foggy, damp weather.

And firefighters, newly trained in the stricter rules, have been trying to crack down.

“In the past, [we] kind of let it go,” said Battalion Chief Glenn Mutch, who oversees the brush-lined, tree-filled canyons and plateaus from Malibu to Calabasas. “You feel uncomfortable telling somebody to take out something they care for, like a live tree. [But] we knew this was something that needed to change.”

In 1996, 33,000 parcels were initially declared unsafe, their owners receiving notices to perform cleanup, said Assistant Fire Chief Michael Wilkinson, who oversees the brush clearance office. But after follow-up inspections, just 1,800 had not mitigated the problems.

Officials say one of the primary reasons so few homes were lost in last year’s Calabasas fire was that many residents had followed brush-removal recommendations.

“A home has a 94% greater chance of surviving a wildfire with good brush clearance,” county fire spokesman Capt. Steve Valenzuela said.

This year, with the extra efforts being made, more than 35,000 properties have been declared unsafe. But early indications are that an even higher percentage of residents are taking care of the problem themselves.

What irked residents in the tree-loving community of Topanga, and other parts of the county, was the Fire Department’s recommendation that live trees be pruned or removed entirely.

In one section of the canyon, of the 300-plus parcels that were inspected, property owners for 290 of the parcels were asked to remove trees, several residents said.

“We had many people calling us and saying, ‘I want to do what’s right but I can’t afford it,’ ” said Susan Nissman, a field deputy for Supervisor Zev Yaroslavsky.

At a “town hall” meeting earlier this month in Topanga, disgruntled residents also said pruning in hot weather can damage or kill trees.

Fire officials agreed to allow residents around the county to wait for cooler weather to begin pruning, even though fire season will come and go in the interim.

They also want to make it clear to well-intentioned residents that fire officials are flexible.

“We’ve always felt that compliance was the key,” Wilkinson said. “We don’t want to go in there with a [cleanup] crew.”

And they don’t much like writing citations, he added.

Michael Georgiades, a 27-year Topanga resident, saw no reason to postpone the grueling duty or argue about time limits, and has spent several days recently removing half a dozen acacia trees and dry brush, as well as poison sumac and poison oak--both of which left him itching.

“We all live up here because it’s a unique lifestyle,” the songwriter said. “There’s a price for everything. This is a price I don’t mind paying.”