California Again Delays Wildfire Protection Rules for Homes

A California state agency won’t meet Gov. Gavin Newsom’s year-end deadline to finish long-delayed regulations to protect homes from wildfires, rules that experts say could have limited the destruction of the January Los Angeles firestorms.

At a meeting of the California Board of Forestry and Fire Protection on Monday, chair Terrence O’Brien said officials would wait until March 2026 to continue work on regulations to require ember-resistant zones, called Zone Zero, around some 2 million houses in high-risk wildfire areas. That means it could be mid-2029 or later before any mandate takes effect for existing homes.

O’Brien cited continued disagreement on how strictly to enforce the Zone Zero requirement to remove plants, wood fences and other combustible material within five feet of a home for the ongoing delays. A 2020 law enacted after a series of devastating wildfires originally mandated a January 2023 deadline to complete the regulations. “That continues to be the challenge we face,” he said at the meeting.

“California is committed to getting Zone Zero right, not just getting it done, through rules that reflect what LA fire survivors have told us while balancing resilience to the next fire, the realities of the insurance market and what homeowners can reasonably afford,” Anthony Martinez, a spokesperson for Newsom, said in an email.

Scientific studies have shown that measures to prevent wind-blown embers from igniting a home dramatically increases its chance of survival. Wildfire officials and insurance executives have pushed for a stringent interpretation of the law amid residents’ pushback against removing lush landscaping, particularly in Southern California.

A similar dynamic led the state in 2023 to put the regulations on hold after missing a January deadline that year to enact the rules. A Bloomberg Green investigation found that the board at that time had refused to ban all combustible materials within Zone Zero while the governor’s office worried about the cost to homeowners.

In the wake of the LA catastrophe that destroyed 16,000 buildings and killed 31 people, Newsom in February ordered the board to resume drafting Zone Zero and finish the work by Dec. 31. The board issued draft regulations in March that barred landscaping, wood fences and gates and other combustible material within five feet of a house but allowed non-flammable pots containing small plants. Trees were permitted as long as branches were trimmed away from the dwelling.

Over the course of 11 public workshops held this year on the regulations, a group of Southern California homeowners, including some that lost their houses in the Eaton and Palisades fires, fought the draft rules, arguing that well-watered plants in Zone Zero would actually protect their homes and removing landscaping would hurt wildlife.

After proposing draft regulations that only allowed potted plants in Zone Zero, the board appeared to backtrack in October, presenting four Zone Zero options, ranging from banning nearly all combustible material to allowing “well-maintained plants” within five feet of a home. At Monday’s hearing, the board heard presentations from horticulturalists who favored allowing certain landscaping within the ember-resistant zone. But officials with Cal Fire, the state fire-fighting agency, said a failure to require a strict Zone Zero would put communities at a growing risk of urban wildfires as climate impacts place more homes in high-risk areas.

Some California cities have already implemented their own version of Zone Zero. Following the LA wildfires, Berkeley officials faced opposition from homeowners after proposing strict ember-resistant zone requirements for parts of the fire-prone Berkeley Hills. But over the summer, the city council approved the rules, which will take effect Jan. 1.

Top photo: Homes destroyed by the Palisades Fire in the Pacific Palisades area of Los Angeles on Jan. 30.