Blazes Prompt Calls for Stricter Building Codes

No one knows it better than those who suffered most from two weeks of Southland fires: There is a price to pay for living on the edge of paradise.

Unmaintained brush, grass and trees turn small fires into infernos that can overrun entire neighborhoods.

Narrow roadways impede firefighters and evacuees.

Closely packed houses with wood siding and shake roofs virtually explode into flames. Propane tanks go up like bombs. And water pressure in the hills drops to nothing when electric pumps fail.

But this time, as communities from Malibu to Laguna Beach and Altadena to Thousand Oaks turn to rebuilding, the question once more is whether people will heed the lessons from the ashes to help avert similar disasters in the future.

Already, there are signs that attitudes among public officials and homeowners may be changing, as is often the case after a disaster.

Los Angeles County officials temporarily have declared a moratorium on building permits in the fire-ravaged community of Pasadena Glen while they ponder how best to beef up safety restrictions before permitting homeowners to rebuild.

Los Angeles County Supervisor Ed Edelman has called for an independent panel of experts to determine if there is a need to rewrite the county’s fire and building codes to better protect people who live in fire-prone areas.

“Government has a responsibility to ensure people’s safety to the best degree that we can,” said Edelman, whose district includes much of the Santa Monica Mountains. “We have to look at the question of how we can accomplish building at less risk.”

In Orange County, officials said, there is perhaps no better example of how improved building standards and other preventive measures work than in the Laguna Beach community of Irvine Cove Crest.

The gated enclave of about 50 luxury homes on the inland side of Coast Highway emerged unscathed, but 60 homes in Emerald Bay next door burned to the ground.

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“Emerald Bay is a much older community,” said Emmy Day, a spokeswoman with the Orange County Fire Department. “Irvine Cove (had) the newer construction--not as much wood and the roofs are made of non-combustible material. All of this can make a tremendous difference.”

Laguna Beach has asked the State Office of Emergency Services to study what might have hindered firefighters in stopping the inferno, City Manager Ken Frank said.

Officials realize that the blaze fed on the many wood shake roofs in town, but building codes updated seven years ago already ban new wood roofs. The codes also encourage the planting of ice plant and other fire-resistant vegetation around homes. “So I don’t anticipate any changes in the building codes,” Frank said.

The city also will ask the state to assess whether a 3-million-gallon reservoir, which council members have refused to endorse for several months, should be built to aid in fighting blazes. The night of the fire, water pressure was low and reservoirs drained quickly, unable to be replenished because of a power failure.

Wood shake roofs, old construction and narrow access, combined with blow-torch conditions, were responsible for destroying most of the 42 houses and mobile homes lost in Ventura County, county Fire Chief George E. Lund said.

Ventura County planners are also contemplating stricter zoning laws that would allow fewer homes to be built in sparsely populated areas of the Santa Monica Mountains.

Even in communities untouched by the flames, there is talk of change.

The tiny Orange County community of Stanton plans to review how well its water supply can meet the emergency needs of a major fire. And Huntington Beach officials are looking at ways to ensure that more homeowners use fire-resistant materials.

For homeowners, whose main concern is to rebuild as quickly as possible, there is also talk of doing so with safety in mind.

“I learned something from this fire,” said Stu Radstrom, 66, whose expensive ranch home in Malibu’s Las Flores Canyon was leveled by the blaze. “I’ll definitely keep the pond, and I’ll get a pump. I’ll have nothing growing that will catch fire within 30 feet of the house.”

Each time disaster strikes, there are loud calls for reform. But as time passes, the sense of urgency often recedes and other factors, including funding, come into play. Still, major fires have sparked noteworthy changes.

In Glendale, where fire damaged or destroyed more than 60 homes and other buildings in 1991, rebuilt homes were required to have fire-safe roofs, enclosed eaves, double-glazed windows and fire-resistant exteriors. After the fire that leveled 641 structures in Santa Barbara that year, building codes were strengthened to require, among other things, fireproof roof coverings.

As the flames die down this week, politicians are calling for tougher building codes, which they say are needed to restrict the type of materials that can be used in certain brush-covered areas susceptible to fire.

Los Angeles Councilman Marvin Braude, who has long represented the mountain and canyon areas at the western edge of the city, said changes in the design of buildings could reduce the risk. He said wood trim, wood siding and wood-frame windows are more susceptible to igniting from the “intense radiant heat” of wildfires.

“There are some reasonable things we can do that wouldn’t affect aesthetics,” he said.

Braude, chairman of the council’s Public Safety Committee, said he will ask the Fire Department to “explore all ways to diminish the risk and learn from the experience” of the 10 days.

Because of standards imposed over the last several years, some who lost their homes in unincorporated areas of Los Angeles County face tougher building codes than those in force when their homes were built. These more stringent requirements could add not only time, but tens of thousands of dollars to rebuilding costs.

A few may not be able to rebuild at all.

In the isolated canyon community of Pasadena Glen in Los Angeles County, where 27 of 62 residences were destroyed and another half-dozen were damaged last week, the county is considering several options, including doubling the width of the only access road before any rebuilding is allowed.

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“Before (the area) burned, it was very picturesque with houses jammed in. But that’s also the danger,” assistant director of county public works Harry Stone told the Board of Supervisors last week. “We don’t want to re-create the same unsafe conditions.”

Despite the costs of stricter codes, fire officials say they are necessary to help prevent future losses in the brush and chaparral blanketing the canyons and mountains of Southern California.

“Fire is part of the natural cycle,” said Alice Allen, fire information officer for the Santa Monica Mountains National Recreation Area. But “since people have built more and more in the canyons, you try to avoid wildfires.”

Over time, however, the quick suppression of wildfires increases the potential for catastrophic infernos like those of recent days. Without occasional fires, nature increases the amount of vegetation available to fuel any blaze. The Malibu fire was fed by thick chaparral--much of it dead wood--that had not burned in more than 30 years, Allen said.

The problem was compounded by the rains of the past two years, which spurred the growth of grasses that are tall and dry and burn very easily.

Also, a lack of water often hampered firefighters in some hillside locations.

In the midst of the firefight in the Kinneloa Canyon area of Altadena and later in parts of Malibu, the power went out, shutting down pumps that push water up the hills.

“One of the sad and ironic things is that electricity will be lost. You need water to fight fires,” said Carol Larson, area manager for Southern California Edison in Thousand Oaks. “This is not a new problem. For years, this has been known.”

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Larson recalled attending a disaster preparedness meeting two years ago--shortly after Malibu became a city--where a key topic was the need for emergency power to a seaside community that endures fires, floods, landslides and high tides.

But, when the Calabasas/Malibu blaze raced across the Santa Monica Mountains to the sea Tuesday, there were no standby generators available to pump water after the fire devoured 150 power poles, cutting off electricity to pumps.

Diesel-powered generators were sent to the area after the fire began, said Donna Guyovich, a spokeswoman for the Los Angeles County Department of Public Works.

“I thought (the firefighters) were going to save several more houses, but at the critical moment, the water just stopped,” said Bob Scott, whose home was among the scores damaged or destroyed in Malibu’s Big Rock Mesa, where a power outage caused pumps to fail.

Last weekend, before the Malibu fire ignited, Los Angeles County Fire Chief P. Michael Freeman said the “power supply is something we have been working on. There has to be some sort of auxiliary power if an interruption of normal electricity occurs.”

Guyovich also said Malibu has a substandard water system. She said the aging system, designed only for domestic use and not for firefighting, has not been upgraded because voters more than a dozen years ago rejected a bond issue to pay for it.

As firefighters and fire victims know only too well, when the frightful forces of gusty Santa Ana winds, high temperatures and extremely low humidity are present, a runaway wildfire can start with a small spark.

To reduce the danger, “some of the firefighting has to be done before you have a fire,” said Allen, the Santa Monica Mountains Recreation Area spokeswoman.

Topping the list of preventive measures is clearing brush and vegetation away from homes and structures in fire-prone areas. But officials say regulations are difficult and costly to enforce when cities have other pressing needs.

In Malibu, the failure to remove brush helped determine whether some homes were spared, city officials said.

“We’ve got to have greater vigilance with brush clearance,” Malibu City Councilman Walt Keller said. “It’s a price people will have to pay.”

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State and federal officials also have begun to re-examine their own fire prevention measures.

Michael J. Rogers, supervisor of the Angeles National Forest, where wildfires burned 5,400 acres, said the fires also point out the crucial need to increase the use of controlled burns to reduce dense vegetation in the foothills of the San Gabriel Mountains.

However, he said, air quality regulations severely limit when the U.S. Forest Service can undertake such preventive fires. The rules are well-intended, he said, but hamstring fire prevention in the forest.

When members of the Clinton Administration visited Southern California to survey the fire damage, Rogers said he and other officials emphasized the need for the Forest Service to be exempt from air quality regulations.

“We’ve just had a wildfire (that smoked up) the whole basin for days on end . . .and it was totally exempt of the air quality rules,” he said.

It would be far better, he said, to have more controlled burns even though air quality would be affected.

“Yes, we will have some smoke in the air,” Rogers said. “And, yes, some people will get ash in their swimming pools from our prescribed burns. But we have to make a trade-off.”

But, where homes meet open lands, controlled burns create controversy. Residents fear for their homes and complain that blackened hillsides reduce property values.

“If you had more controlled burns, you would not have the excessive buildup of the fuel,” said Joe Edmiston, executive director of the Santa Monica Mountains Conservancy. “But doing an appropriate controlled burn is tough. There is always the fear that it might get out of control.”

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Contributing to fire coverage were Times staff writers Eric Bailey, Leslie Berger, Bettina Boxall, David Colker, Aaron Curtiss, Tina Daunt, David Ferrell, Michael Granberry, Lee Harris, Nancy Hill-Holtzman, Nieson Himmel, Berkley Hudson, Tracey Kaplan, Jesse Katz, J. Michael Kennedy, Dianne Klein, Thuan Le, Eric Malnic, Josh Meyer, Sonia Nazario, Jim Newton, Mark Platte, Mack Reed, John Schwada, Julie Tamaki and Dan Weikel. Also contributing were Times researchers Cecilia Rasmussen, Tracy Thomas, Cynthia L. Viers and Nona Yates.