Feeling Burned by Marketers After Wildfire

More than a year after Southern California’s worst wildfires were doused, residents of the fire-prone mountains are still bombarded with sales pitches for fire protection products, including exterior home sprinkler systems and solutions touted to snuff out the tree-killing bark beetle.

But fire officials and several residents who have tried the products said some of them hadn’t worked as advertised.

Hydroshield Marketing Corp., a Rancho Cucamonga company that sells an outdoor sprinkler system, is under investigation by the San Bernardino County district attorney’s office after the Sheriff’s Department looked into two complaints that the firm made false and misleading statements in marketing the system. The state has also cited the firm for operating without a contractor’s license.

Hydroshield, which vehemently defends its product, is one of several companies that have ventured into the mountain communities to sell fire safety products after a series of wind-whipped fires in fall 2003 charred nearly 740,000 acres and destroyed more than 3,600 homes in Southern California.

Several solutions touted as all natural and promising to kill the ravenous bark beetle that has killed thousands of trees have been on sale at some hardware stores in the San Bernardino Mountains. But county fire officials said one product was nothing more than dishwashing soap that sells for $40 a gallon but which cannot penetrate tree bark.

In September, Riverside and San Bernardino counties ordered a Cardiff company to stop spraying trees with what the company described as an organic bark beetle repellent. The counties’ cease-and-desist orders said the solution had not been registered with the federal Environmental Protection Agency as required or been proved effective against the beetles. The mixture was reportedly acknowledged to be a solution of worm feces, seaweed and other organic material.

San Bernardino County Fire Marshal Peter Brierty said he knew of about half a dozen companies that were selling exterior fire sprinkler systems, as Hydroshield has.

Brierty said fire officials cannot test the effectiveness of every product, but he was leery of any sprinkler system that connected directly to a municipal water line because it could lower the water pressure firefighters needed to battle a blaze.

Residents in fire-prone areas can best protect their homes, Brierty said, by clearing out dry vegetation and flammable material from around their properties.

Tom Wylie, a retired engineer and Big Bear resident, is one of those who has complained to authorities about Hydroshield. He said he saw a newspaper ad promoting the exterior sprinkler system, which promised to coat his home with water and flame retardant at the first sign of an approaching fire.

“I thought it was an excellent concept,” he said.

Wylie was so convinced the system would work that he called the number in the ad and put down a $500 deposit. But he said the system failed, after several tests, to coat even half his roof.

David A. Rahm, a vice president and general counsel for Hydroshield, defended the product, saying it can save many homes in a wildfire. The company plans to promote the system at a fire prevention fair in San Diego this week. Rahm acknowledged that the company failed to get a contractor’s license but said it had since filed an application for one with the state.

“We are a very serious bunch of guys, and we are providing a product that we think will help the community,” Rahm said.

Wylie said Hydroshield made bogus claims about the system, installed it without a license and left him liable for a permit-less system that was connected to his water supply. He said the system was priced at $5,500 but he canceled the contract before paying the full amount.

Sue Oleson, a writer who had the system installed at her Big Bear home, echoed Wylie’s complaints about the Hydroshield system. She said her system was billed at $7,000, but she also canceled the contract.

“It was just a joke,” she said.

Wylie has since disconnected his system and demanded that Hydroshield remove the sprinklers and return his $500 deposit. He said Hydroshield agreed but only if Wylie signed a contract promising not to speak disparagingly in public about the company. Wylie refused. Oleson said the company wanted to impose the same condition on her, but she also refused.

Rahm said the systems at both homes don’t work because the customers stopped the installation before it was completed.

He noted that Oleson and Wylie were the only two customers to complain, but he also said Hydroshield had installed four systems in Southern California.

He said Hydroshield was launched in December 2003, with distributors in California, Arizona and Nevada.

A few months after the last year’s wildfires, Hydroshield advertised in a Big Bear newspaper and staffed a booth at a fire prevention fair in Big Bear Lake.

The company’s Web page says its sprinklers can be triggered by company employees who monitor fires through satellite images 24 hours a day or by heat sensors attached to the homes. Pipes connect the sprinklers to a fire-retardant tank and to the local water system. Rahm said future versions of the system can be connected to a free-standing water tank.

Responding to complaints by Oleson and Wylie, the Contractors State Licensing Board cited Hydroshield twice in September for operating without a license and fined it $1,250 in each case. The company paid.

Rahm said he failed to get the license because he believed he simply needed to hire licensed contractors to install the systems. He said Hydroshield had stopped installing the systems until its license was granted.

“We will go on,” Rahm said. “We will get our license and we will offer this product to the communities of Southern California.”

Hydroshield was investigated by San Bernardino County Sheriff’s Det. Ken Lutz, who said he interviewed Oleson and Wylie and submitted a report to the district attorney’s office. Lutz said the district attorney’s office may consider filing consumer fraud charges against Hydroshield if investigators determined that the sprinkler system did not perform as advertised.

The report is now on the desk of Deputy Dist. Atty. Kristianna Parde, who declined to comment except to say she was reviewing the case.