Wooden Roof Issue Resurfaces Following Fires

SACRAMENTO — Legislation to prohibit the use of wooden roof shingles that are not fire resistant is being considered again after recent disastrous residential fires in California.

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

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

But a lobbyist who opposes such laws said that Los Angeles and most 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 put the blame for 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 that a new bill could not 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 be passed.

Wood in Baldwin Hills

Watson said the majority of the 83 homes in Baldwin Hills that were destroyed or severely damaged 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 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.

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

The state fire marshal has scheduled public hearings in five cities next month on roofing standards. They will be 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.