Fighting Fire With Enforcement

Tujunga resident Lucy Burger described a scene that should give chills to anyone who lives in a fire-prone area, which includes much of the San Fernando Valley’s mountainous periphery. Burger told a reporter that she was folding laundry in her Tranquil Drive home earlier this month when the sunny day literally went dark. She rushed outside and saw a plume of smoke blocking the sun, heard a roar of flames and felt ashes on her face. The fire was that close--and that big.

The Aug. 5 fire, believed to have been caused by arson, charred nearly 250 acres near the Foothill Freeway, making it the worst fire in that area since the 1950s. Thanks to the efforts of firefighters from Glendale, Pasadena, Ventura County, the U.S. Forest Service and Los Angeles city and county, no lives were lost or homes destroyed.

But it wasn’t just the firefighters who saved lives and homes, and it wasn’t just luck either. A Los Angeles Fire Department spokesman credited area residents for having cleared much of the dry brush around their homes ahead of time. The Tujunga fire and its aftermath stand as a powerful reminder of just how important brush clearance is in the tinder-dry Los Angeles area--a point that was easy to lose sight of in last spring’s uproar over a newly imposed, and eventually rescinded, $13 brush clearance inspection fee.

City regulations require mountain fire district property owners to clear brush within 200 feet of structures and 10 feet of roadways. The Fire Department sends out inspectors to make sure property owners comply. The City Council approved a $13 fee to pay for inspections, but the notices delivered to property owners were so clumsily worded that residents, especially in the Valley, rebelled. Opposition to the $13 fee was even cited as one reason voters defeated police and fire bonds in city elections in April.

The City Council not only rescinded the controversial fee but voted to refund roughly $930,000 in fees that had already been paid. The question of how future inspections would be funded was left for later, when cooler temperatures, if not cooler heads, might prevail.

Since the fee fiasco, we’re happy to report that some progress has been made.

Fire Department inspectors have begun using palm-sized computers with a specially developed software program that cuts in half the time needed to process brush clearance violations. The new computers aren’t free, of course, but they were paid for with money originally earmarked for even more expensive laptop computers. Plus the Fire Department estimates it is saving the city about $123,000 a year in inspection and data entry costs.

In addition, the City Council earlier this summer voted unanimously to approve an ordinance allowing brush clearance noncompliance fees to be added to Los Angeles County property tax bills. The $204 noncompliance fee is separate from the rescinded inspection fee; property owners are fined for not complying with mandated brush clearance regulations. The noncompliance fee is not new. The problem has always been collecting it. By attaching the fee to property taxes--which most property owners are diligent about paying--the Fire Department hopes to recover more than 90% of an estimated $500,000 in fines owed. And once more revenue starts coming in, other fees could be dropped or reduced--or, in the case of the gone-today $13 inspection fee--not reintroduced.

Don’t get us wrong: We think $13 is a trivial amount to pay to save lives and property. And we know that the same groups that protested the imposition of a new inspection fee are fuming about the “impurity” of adding the noncompliance fee to tax bills. But we think anything that both enforces the urgent need for brush clearance and provides revenue to make sure it gets done is worth trying. Some people only need to hear a story of the sun going dark to get the message. Others, apparently, need something more.