Drought Fuels L.A. Fire Threat : Danger: The city’s hills and canyons are tinder dry, and officials are warning thousands of property owners to clear brush away.

Los Angeles could be facing its greatest wildfire threat in decades, city officials warn.

The four-year drought has produced “very dangerous conditions” for tens of thousands of residents of the city’s hills and canyons--already brush-fire danger zones, Los Angeles Fire Chief Donald O. Manning said.

Annual legal notices have been mailed to 103,000 property owners, warning them to clear chaparral 100 feet from their homes by month’s end.

Starting May 1, a posse of inspectors will sweep through the city’s mountains and valleys, checking properties to make sure grass and brush have been properly removed, Fire Department spokesman Gary Svider said.

If the work hasn’t been done, the city will hire it out. Violators will be charged the tab plus a $250 administrative fee on their next local property tax bill.

“We consider the conditions very hazardous,” said Mike A. Theule, the city’s senior inspector in the brush clearing unit.

Svider said the last time wildfire conditions were this bad was in the late 1940s, when there was a several-year drought.

Even without a drought, Southern California has always been home to brush fires. When high temperatures dry out the brush and arid Santa Ana winds blow through the region, the combination has proven explosive, Theule said. Dozens of people have died and hundreds of homes have been destroyed in Southern California brush fires in the last several decades.

Unseasonably warm weather and low rainfall have made for a bad marriage this year, fire officials say, producing thick parched grass and brush in the mountainous areas that ring metropolitan Los Angeles.

Besides clearing the chaparral, property owners also must keep tree limbs a minimum of 10 feet from chimneys and dead branches must be pruned if they are lower than five feet from the ground.

More than 93% of property owners in the wildfire danger zones complied last year with the city ordinance requiring them to clear wild foliage around their property, Svider said.

The city’s 11-year-old brush clearance program has been a success, according to Manning, who said property losses to uncontrollable wildfires have been reduced substantially.

Because it has many southern-facing hills that get more hours of sunlight, Franklin Canyon north of Beverly Hills is among the most vulnerable areas in Los Angeles for a wildfire. No fire has started in the canyon for 50 years, Theule said. And there is plenty of fuel for a fire among the 200 or so homes that dot the canyon floor and ridge tops.

So the Fire Department will burn brush on several ridges there today to create a fire break.

This weekend, residents of Franklin Canyon had already begun clearing yards that rise steeply into open hillsides.

A crew of four gardeners worked eight hours Saturday with a machete, rake and pruners, clearing a 70-degree slope behind a back-yard swimming pool.

“We do this every year,” said Rosa Martinez, 17, whose father is the homeowner’s regular gardener. “They just got the notice from the Fire Department this week.”

Near the “Hollywood” sign flanking Griffith Park, some hillside residents said they plan to clear their yards, though they generally put the work off as long as possible.

“The area I have to clear is pretty steep, so I have to use ropes to get to it with a machete. It’s like mountain climbing,” said Chuck White, a free-lance movie sound mixer. “But we haven’t had a fire in this area in 40 years and I have a wood-shake roof. Considering the risk, the work is worth it.”

A few miles away, on Hidden Valley Place, Derek Layton surveyed the slope behind his house and said that last year he was unable to find workers to clear thickets of chaparral. So he let the Fire Department hire someone.

“It cost me at least $150,” he said. This year, he said, he will wait for the inspections to see if it’s necessary to clear again.

Absentee owners make up most of the violators, Theule said. “They just pay their maintenance costs to the city each year in their taxes, and believe me, it is not an exorbitant fee.”

While the average cost is $1,000 for work the Fire Department contracts to private haulers, the most expensive bill went to a Tujunga Canyon resident who Theule said never cleared away a large and brushy property. His taxes had an extra $20,000 tagged on.

Fire Department spokesman Svider said clearing brush from around homes may not stop a fire but it certainly can put the brakes on one.

“A fire needs fuel or it won’t burn,” he said. “That’s all we want is for residents to help by not feeding a fire with this stuff.”