Threat of Brush Fires Extensive in Southland After 4-Year Drought

The Southland could be facing its greatest wildfire threat in decades, fire officials warn.

The four-year drought has produced “very dangerous conditions” for tens of thousands of residents in brush-fire danger zones, Los Angeles Fire Chief Donald O. Manning said.

Orange County’s year-round weed abatement program requires that property owners in certain fire-vulnerable areas manage brush and other vegetation to minimize fire danger. If they don’t, the county will send a crew to take care of the errant growth, but at a cost to the property owner, said Steve Floren of the Orange County Fire Department.

Legal notices have been mailed to 103,000 property owners in Los Angeles County, warning them to clear chaparral 100 feet from their homes by month’s end.

Starting May 1, a posse of inspectors will sweep through Los Angeles’ 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.”

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.