Weed whackers wanted

SOMEBODY GIVE US a weed whacker, quick. If the California Department of Transportation won’t clear the tinder-dry brush around Los Angeles freeways, someone -- anyone -- needs to do it, and fast.

Los Angeles fire officials have been pleading with Caltrans for more than four years to clear vegetation that poses a severe fire hazard along at least six freeways, threatening thousands of homes. The only thing they haven’t tried is doing the work themselves -- which is precisely what would have happened by now if the freeways were owned by private individuals rather than a state agency.

Residents of hillside areas do a relatively good job of clearing brush on their property, partly because they don’t have much choice. Every year, they receive a notice from the L.A. Fire Department ordering them to do the work; if the homeowners are too lazy, the department may contract out the job itself and fine the homeowner.

Yet the Fire Department has no authority to do the same with Caltrans, even though jungles of uncleared brush along freeways such as the 405 in Sepulveda Pass, the 118 in Northridge and the 110 near Mount Washington are putting the lives of firefighters and residents in serious danger. Southern California is suffering through the driest rainy season on record, and the fire risk has been at maximum levels for the last 12 months.

The risk is heightened because of bureaucratic and jurisdictional squabbles between public agencies. Caltrans points out that not only is it exempt from city laws requiring brush clearance 200 feet from structures, in most cases it doesn’t own the land that far away. The agency also fears that denuding hillsides will increase runoff of sediment into storm drains, in violation of state and federal runoff rules.

L.A. City Councilman Jack Weiss on Tuesday ordered the Fire Department and the city attorney’s office to untangle this morass and list the city’s legal options for forcing Caltrans to get busy; at the state level, Assemblyman Mike Feuer (D-Los Angeles) is on the case as well.

But we don’t have months to debate and study this issue. The next time a brush fire sparked by a cigarette butt thrown from a car window races over L.A.’s hillsides, it will be quite clear who deserves the blame: the bureaucrats and politicians who were aware of the problem but did not act quickly enough to solve it. There is no higher priority for government than protecting the lives and property of its people.

Divert prison inmates to freeway brush clearance duty. Sic a pack of lawyers on Caltrans, or better yet, hand them orange vests and a machete. Hire truckloads of day laborers to do the job.

Whatever it takes, this is a problem that needs to be solved right away.