Pruning gives Laurel Canyon a new look

Laurel Canyon has gotten a buzz cut.

Citing potential fire risk, authorities ordered the trimming of hundreds of oak, pine, sycamore and eucalyptus trees along the fabled canyon, a longtime home to magicians, musicians and actors. The trees had not been trimmed in many years, according to the Los Angeles Fire Department.

The aim of the pruning, Fire Inspector John Novela said, was to remove vegetation that could impede fire trucks or residents evacuating the canyon’s narrow roads. Officially, he said, brush-fire season runs from May to the end of November. The trimming was done by a contractor in August.

Any branches overhanging the street along Laurel Canyon Boulevard, Lookout Mountain Avenue, Kirkwood Drive, Wonderland Avenue and Laurel Pass Avenue were sheared off. A few people accustomed to the canyon’s lush canopy — and the shade it provided — complained about the work recently at the Canyon Country Store, the area’s de facto town square. The trees, they said, looked as if they were butchered.

“Laurel Canyon looks like an alley in East L.A.,” Garett Carlson, a Beverly Hills landscape architect, said. “If I lived there, I would get a class action together and file suit for loss of privacy and property value.”

Canyon resident John Warren, out walking his dog one recent afternoon, agreed that the trimming seemed a “crash and burn, slice and dice” affair, but he said “the general consensus was that the hazard was worse than the [ill effects on] the visual aesthetic.”

Richard Seireeni, who manages the Laurel Canyon Assn.’s email exchange, said of the trimming: “I don’t think it makes the canyon look more pretty. I also don’t think it’s permanently damaging in any way. I think it was a wise and prudent thing to do.”

“It’s always nice to have shady trees hanging over streets,” Seireeni added. “The problem is when a fire storm hits and it’s wind-driven, if the area directly above the street is an inferno, you’re going to roast people in cars trying to get out.”

An added benefit, he said, was clearing branches from power lines. “Whenever the wind blows up here,” he said, “we lose power.”

A quickly doused brush fire in 2009 in the area reminded old-timers of the 1979 Kirkwood Bowl/Laurel Canyon Fire, which destroyed 23 homes.

“Right now our main focus is the Mt. Olympus and Hollywood Hills area because the canopies have gotten so bad,” Novela said. “We’ve had a history of fires there and have problems with access for our own fire trucks.” Fire trucks need at least 14 feet of vertical clearance, he said.

Nichols Canyon is another area “that’s very heavy,” Novela said. “If we can, we will try to get to that one as well.” Mulholland Drive is due for some light trimming.

Less likely to face a visit from the tree barbers is Benedict Canyon, where trees form enormous canopies but over wider streets that don’t have the same access problems as the narrower, older canyon roads. Homes there tend to be newer and more widely spaced, Novela said.

But if fire officials begin making noises about trimming the canopies over Benedict Canyon, they could face some blowback from residents. “It’s going to be an uproar,” said Michael Chasteen, president of the Benedict Canyon Assn. “We will have some unhappy people.”

martha.groves@latimes.com