Council Votes to Ban Wood Shingle Roofs

The City Council on Wednesday tentatively banned new wood shingle roofs citywide, putting Los Angeles on target to become the first major city in the nation to outlaw the popular roofing material.

The action came on a 12-1 vote, virtually ensuring passage when the measure comes up for final approval next week.

The vote, bolstered by fire officials’ warnings that even treated wood roofs can greatly increase fire losses, was a stunning blow to the wood shingle industry, which claims that the Los Angeles area provides at least 75% of its $50 million in annual sales.

Jobs Could Be Lost

A spokesman for the Cedar Shake and Shingle Bureau, a trade organization representing 250 manufacturers of the roofing products, said hundreds of workers--primarily in the states of Washington and Oregon and the Western provinces of Canada--could lose their jobs and multimillion dollar plants constructed to satisfy the demand of Los Angeles home builders for specially treated wood shingles could be closed.

Michael Westfall, president of the trade organization, said his group will urge Mayor Tom Bradley to veto the measure, which he called “unwarranted and discriminatory.” If that fails, he said, the group will sue.

Westfall said he feared a “spirit of one-upmanships” would spread through California, causing other city and county governments to follow suit. San Clemente is currently the only city in California with a ban on wood roofs.

The vote, the most dramatic in the 30 years of debate over the safety of wood roofs, was a showdown between the Fire Department and the industry. It came three days after a blaze in the unincorporated Puente Hills area. Of the 35 buildings destroyed or damaged in the fire, Los Angeles County Fire Department officials said, 13 had wood shingles, 9 had composition roofing material, 9 had metal roofs, 4 had tile or slate.

If the Los Angeles ordinance becomes law, wood shingle roofs would be banned in all new home construction. Wood materials would also be banned in roof replacements and repairs affecting more than 10% of the roof’s area. Existing wood roofs would not otherwise be affected.

Fire Department officials have long maintained that wood shake and shingle roofs--even if treated with fire retardant material--are extremely dangerous since they are prone to catch fire from falling sparks and to throw off embers. Los Angeles Fire Department Assistant Chief Davis Parsons said 931 Los Angeles homes have been damaged or destroyed in fires that involved wood shingle roofs of all kinds since 1961 when the damaging Bel-Air fire awakened fire officials to the danger of wood roofs.

Require Treatment

The city has for several years required that wood roofs be treated with fire-retardant chemicals, but Councilman Hal Bernson had proposed that they be banned altogether in the city’s so-called mountain fire zones. Two weeks ago, Councilman Marvin Braude, long a proponent of banning wood roofs, surprised the industry by amending Bernson’s motion to include the entire city.

The industry called on the Canadian Consulate to help in its lobbying effort, and the trade group hosted a special test in an effort to demonstrate for city officials how safe their materials are.

Council members expressed sympathy for the plight of the industry and bemoaned the economic hardship the ordinance might cause, but the Fire Department was ultimately able to persuade the council that it knows what is best for Los Angeles.

Although wood shingle roofs have been popular in Los Angeles since their introduction in the 1950s (roughly 30% of all homes in Los Angeles have such roofs, industry officials estimate), the Fire Department has long blamed them for boosting the damage toll of periodic brush fires.

Bel-Air Fire

Los Angeles first banned untreated wood shingle materials in high fire-risk areas in 1961 after the Bel-Air fire. In 1982, after the Mandeville Canyon fire, the city required use citywide of fire-retardant-treated cedar shingles.

Those materials have a fairly good track record, with only one fire nationwide believed to have been spread by such materials. But city fire officials maintain that they still have not been properly tested. For the unincorporated areas, county supervisors are considering extending the requirement that wood roofs in hillside areas be treated with fire retardants.

Councilman Ernani Bernardi, a former builder, cast the only “no” vote, calling the ban “unnecessary.” But, he said, it “scares the life out of you” to see how many homes have wooden roofs.