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Local committee urged to align landscaping rules with state defensible-space and insurer standards
Summary
A town committee heard a technical presentation on wildfire risk linking state building-code incorporations, CAL FIRE defensible-space guidance and insurer certification standards to rising nonrenewals; presenters urged revising the town’s landscape guide and clarifying local ordinances to reduce homeowner exposure and insurance loss.
Neil, the presenter, told the Emergency Preparedness & Response Committee that state building rules now incorporate CAL FIRE’s General Guidelines for Creating Defensible Space and that Title 24 has tightened spacing and shrub-group requirements for new development. He said the CAL FIRE guidance allows either 10-foot canopy separations or continuous canopy with complete understory removal, but noted the incorporation-by-reference language in state regulations can make local requirements appear ambiguous.
The presentation linked those regulatory changes to insurance outcomes. Neil said insurers and third-party vendors (he cited Verisk and other proprietary scorers) are assigning high wildfire-risk scores to properties with dense vegetation and close tree/shrub spacing. He described the Insurance Institute for Business & Home Safety (IBHS) Wildfire Prepared Home standard as stricter than some CAL FIRE methods and said some homeowners face nonrenewals or steep premium increases unless they meet insurer certification standards.
Drawing on post-fire analyses (including Camp Fire data), Neil presented a survival curve showing that higher canopy cover correlated with lower home survival probability in that fire and argued upwind canopy cover matters more than downwind cover. He said anecdotal photos of trees apparently protecting some homes do not outweigh the statistical trend and concluded: “The status quo is unnatural. It’s unsafe. It’s increasingly uninsurable.”
Committee members asked for clarity about what is legally required versus advisory; Neil replied that certain CAL FIRE materials are incorporated into state code and therefore carry regulatory weight, but also noted there is limited local discretion where state law delegates approval to a CAL FIRE-designated fire expert.
Several members pressed for practical next steps. Staff and the EPR chair agreed to have the ordinance committee review the town’s landscape guide and related municipal code citations for inconsistencies with current state code and CAL FIRE guidance. Neil suggested the town could emulate Woodside’s approach of taking model defensible-space inspection guidance and embedding clear, local ordinance language to remove ambiguity.
The committee also discussed outreach and education to accompany any regulatory changes, including using historical photos and demonstrations to show how a more fire-safe landscape can look. Staff noted a Home Ignition Zone (HIZ) training for committee members is scheduled for March 10 at Town Hall and recommended combining ordinance work with community education to reduce resistance.
The session closed with an action item: staff (Cody) and committee leads will review ordinance language and the landscaping guide, then return recommendations to the committee for consideration.
