Wooden Roof Issue Surfaces Again : Fires Spur Lawmakers to Consider Shingle Regulations

Legislation to prohibit the use of wooden roof shingles that don’t resist fire is being considered again after disastrous residential fires in California.

Assemblyman Richard Robinson (D-Garden Grove), who failed to win passage of two similar bills after a disastrous 1982 Anaheim fire, said Friday he may try again.

And state Sen. Diane Watson (D-Los Angeles), who represents the Baldwin Hills area where three people died in home fires last week, said she would introduce a bill immediately.

Already Required in L.A.

But a lobbyist who opposes such laws said that Los Angeles and most of the other local jurisdictions in Southern California already require fire-retardant roofing.

Robinson gave reporters copies of a letter to Los Angeles Supervisor Kenneth Hahn in which he blamed the defeat of his earlier legislation on “the overwhelming opposition of the Red Cedar Shingle and Handsplit Shake Bureau and their related industries.”

He said he believes the opposition remains the same, and a new bill couldn’t become law before January anyway. But if he is able to raise “a consensus with the other members (of the Legislature) who have had their districts ravaged by fire,” he would reintroduce his bill in January so that it would have a whole year to obtain passage.

Wood in Baldwin Hills

Watson said the majority of the 62 homes destroyed and 21 severely damaged in Baldwin Hills had wood shingle or wood shake roofs.

“On one block, the only home undamaged had a slate roof,” she said in a prepared statement.

The Sacramento lobbyist for the Bellevue, Wash.-based Red Cedar Shingle and Handsplit Shake Bureau, Joe A. Gonsalves, said in an interview that “a lot of others” also opposed Robinson’s legislation.

“The real reason that it was defeated is the fact that it is better left up to local jurisdictions. . . . The determination of where a shake roof should be permissible should really be left to the counties and cities, as it is today,” Gonsalves said.

Many Jurisdictions

He said that of the 191 local governmental jurisdictions in Southern California, 108 have roofing regulations.

In Los Altos Hills in Santa Santa Clara County, the Town Council voted in 1981 to require all new and replaced roofs to be of fire-retardant materials. But that gave rise to a local initiative drive, and the ordinance was repealed by nearly 80% of the vote, Gonsalves said.

The wood shingle lobby estimates that fire-retardant roofing would cost an average of $1,000 per home more than ordinary roofing, and that a million roofs in California are covered with wood shingles.

The state fire marshal had earlier scheduled public hearings in five cities next month on the setting of roofing standards. They are Aug. 5 in San Diego, Aug. 6 in San Bernardino, Aug. 7 in Sacramento, Aug. 12 in Redding and Aug. 13 in Fresno.

The hearings follow 1982 legislation requiring the fire marshal to regulate roof coverings.