Homeowners Get Busy, Remove Fire Hazards

Prompted by the Normal Heights fire this week, many homeowners have begun cleaning up the brush and debris along canyon land.

Erma Jensen, of Jensen’s Family, a San Diego lot-cleaning business, said eight people have called the firm since Sunday. “We are listed under ‘lot cleaning’ (in the Yellow Pages), not just ‘gardening,’ and that’s probably why we have received so many calls,” Jensen said.

“All the canyons are trouble spots right now. Probably before the end of the week, there’ll be 50 calls.”

Barbara Riegel, who lives near San Diego State University, said Sunday’s fire was “very much the motivation” for her call to Jensen’s Family.

“We do live right on a canyon, and we’ve been lax over the last few years in making sure the canyon was clear. The fire really raised our consciousness.”

Jean Maxwell, Riegel’s next-door neighbor, said she has had the area behind her house cleared every year for 20 years. “I live on a canyon, and I know how combustible canyons are,” she said. “The Fire Department sent out leaflets last week, and I was reminded again that I needed to get to work on it.”

Bo-Mar Detail, a commercial gardening business, has had one call because of Sunday’s fire. A regular customer asked the firm to clear the canyon area behind his home, said Mark Swenson, an employee.

Swenson said the company once specialized in cleaning up canyons, but switched to commercial landscaping because it is less costly. “It’s very expensive to put people down into canyons,” he said. “They need to be licensed, and they need to be insured because of the danger of twisted ankles and snakes. Once you’ve got a licensed, insured person, the price goes up drastically.”

Jensen said the price of cleaning up the area behind canyon homes varies. “To clear away absolutely everything, it can cost up to $1,500, $2,000,” she said. “The reason the people don’t call before a fire is that it’s expensive.”

Employees of some gardening services said they hadn’t received many calls since the fire.

“I tell you, most people think it’s never going to happen to them,” said an employee at A-1 Green Thumb.

Some residents along canyons have decided to dedicate themselves to making their backyards safer. Dianne Doria, who lives on a canyon on Wilshire Drive, just one block east of where the fire hit Sunday, said she intends to remove some bushes from her backyard as soon as the heat breaks.

“We have iceplant, but we have some trees we have to get rid of,” she said. “My mother lives in City Heights, and she has sprinklers in her backyard that haven’t worked in years. She was saying she better get them fixed.”