Los Angeles County Fire Department personnel had an informational meeting at Santa Clarita City Hall to discuss concerns and provide transparency to local homeowners about the county’s brush clearance program on Saturday.
Sixty local homeowners trickled in and out of City Hall, and spoke with Fire Department personnel and asked questions about how they could follow the brush clearance program guidelines in order to protect their homes and other properties, and what would happen if they did not.
Local residents who attended the protest hearing were not necessarily opposed to the program requirements, and some were more concerned about whether their homes were of higher risk than other locations, how costly it could become and why the program was a requirement.
The brush clearance program is designed to prevent large wildfires in the Very High Fire Hazard Severity Zones, according to the California Office of the State Fire Marshall website.
Santa Clarita’s outer perimeters and unincorporated areas are in the red zones for higher-risk areas of wildfires, according to the approved map provided by the California Fire Marshall website.
“The state requires CalFire to create these maps, the state says you have to categorize these lands for hazard severity and state law bumps down to the county, [then] the county now has to enforce and inspect these properties within designs,” said Trevor Moore, assistant chief of forestry for the L.A County Fire Department.
In order to ensure homeowners are complying with the regulations, firefighters will visit homes and inspect the vegetation. If there are any issues to address, they will notify the homeowners and they must meet the requirements within 30 days, said Moore.
If residents do not comply with the regulations, they run the risk of being cited and fined up to $1,400 and Los Angeles County will hire an outside party to clear out the vegetation that causes the violations. Homeowners will be charged for the service through their taxes, added Moore.
“That’s the enforcement piece that we really don’t ever want to get to. We would love to work with each homeowner to get that parcel up to compliance for them and for us,” said Moore.
“What we wanted to do was just make sure that everyone had a good knowledge of what the Fire Department is asking going into the brush season … We did a little of public education and a little bit of one-on-one review of their parcel to ensure that they were where they thought they were in the mapping,” said Pat Sprengel, acting assistant chief for the L.A County Fire Department.
For more information about the brush clearance program and brush fire mapping visit https://fire.lacounty.gov/fire-hazard-reduction-programs/
