Time’s Up for Clearing Out Brush

With the dawn of another fire season, property owners throughout Ventura and Los Angeles counties raced this week to meet today’s deadline for clearing weeds from vacant lots and pruning dead vegetation from roofs, chimneys, gazebos and fences.

The fire-prevention mandate, which involves hundreds of thousands of privately owned parcels and all government-owned land in fire-prone areas, is part of programs run by county and city fire departments from Ojai to Lancaster to reduce the risk of wildfires.

“It’s a good source of income, but it’s tough work,” said Scott Koss, owner of Pro-West Landscaping in Thousand Oaks, who has been working seven days a week for the past month to bring recreational areas, mobile home sites and industrial parks in Simi Valley and Westlake into compliance. “We ran into eight rattlesnakes, and when you step on them they bite the snake chaps we have to wear. I had people quit last year because of that.”

Fire officials credit mandatory brush removal programs for reducing property losses from the fierce blazes that typically occur in Southern California when the Santa Ana winds blow strong each fall. Fire season in Ventura and Los Angeles counties began last month and typically runs through October or November.

“It’s really amazing how well it works,” said Sandi Wells, a spokeswoman for the Ventura County Fire Department. “I have a video from the North Ranch fire on the day after Christmas and you can see a wall of flame coming up. But when it hits the area that was abated, there isn’t any more fuel and it just stops.”

Similar lessons have apparently had an impact on homeowners in the quarter century since Ventura County launched its weed abatement effort. By Thursday, 99% of the 15,000 landowners covered under the county’s program had already reported having completed the required brush removal, according to Wells.

“It’s probably one of the few programs anywhere that has that kind of compliance for any reason,” she said. “We have been doing it for so long, the community understands the value of it.”

Good citizenship, however, may account for only part of the high compliance rate.

Next week, engine companies will begin inspecting properties to make sure weeds were trimmed back to the regulation 3 inches or lower and that no dead tree limbs or hazardous grasses remain within 100 feet of any structures. Scofflaws will receive brief reprieves, but after that they must pay a crew hired by the county to do the work, plus a fine of $645 in Ventura County and $532 in Los Angeles County.

Wells said that unresponsive property owners are usually newer residents who do not understand how destructive wildfires can be. A wind-borne ember can travel up to five miles, threatening homes that are nowhere near a sage-covered hillside or a lot choked with mustard plants, she said.

Charles Cole, a lifelong Ventura resident, has seen more than his share of wildfires during the 70 years he has lived on Church Street near Aliso Canyon. In 1971, a blaze that swept the hillside from the Ondulando subdivision to Grant Park destroyed two homes; in 1996, a fire that began at Grant Park spread to midtown Ventura and came within feet of several houses on Aliso Street.

Owning property in such a vulnerable neighborhood has made Cole appreciate the city’s weed abatement program even though, as one of the 1,300 property owners it affects, he has to pull out his weed whacker every spring and spend several days attacking stubborn chaparral.

“I think it’s great. That’s why we don’t have the problem Santa Barbara had when they lost all those homes,” Cole said. “It’s just a chore that’s got to be done.”

It’s not surprising that many people employ private landscaping companies to do their brush removal, given the hazards that professionals like Koss and Dean Rich of Ventura face for the sake of fire reduction.

In addition to snakes, there are yellow jacket nests, allergy-producing dust and pollen, excessive heat, prickly foxtails and an occasional tumble down slippery slopes to contend with.

“It’s a nasty, nasty job,” said Rich, owner of J & D Enterprises. “You can’t imagine how hard it is to be standing on the edge of nothing with your toes digging in and swinging this heavy machine all around. By the time I got done with one job, I felt like I’d just been beaten up by an angry mob.”

At the same time, Rich, an Aliso Canyon resident, thinks fire officials are right to order property owners to maintain safe zones.

“People will pay a decent wage to landscape their yard, but weed abatement is not something they want to do,” he said. “That’s why the fire department has to send out these ‘screaming eagle’ letters threatening people. Otherwise, they wouldn’t do it.”

Today is also the start of the fire season in Los Padres National Forest, where 26,000 acres of land are burned on average every year. Last fire season, however, was mild, with 63 fires scorching only 6,529 acres of the 1.75-million-acre forest, which stretches from Ventura County to the Big Sur coast.

Fire officials urge forest visitors to be careful with lighted cigarettes, build campfires only with a valid permit and in appropriate areas and make sure all vehicles have an approved spark arrester that works.

Wells said even property owners who do not live adjacent to wilderness areas should take precautions to protect their homes, such as trimming low-lying branches from pine and eucalyptus trees and removing dead growth from flower beds.

Forecasts for the next 90 days are predicting above-average temperatures and no rainfall in Southern California, conditions that heighten fire danger.