In Berkeley’s neighborhoods with high wildfire risk, the fire department’s Wildland Urban Interface (WUI) Division sends inspectors and interns to document potential ignition risks, from annual grasses that can dry and ignite to vulnerable windows, among other work the division does. They also give recommendations for mitigation work, focusing on what is known colloquially as “zone zero” — or, more generally, an “ember resistance zone” — and warn residents when their homes are out of joint with the fire code.
“We want people to really pay attention 5 feet from the house,” said WUI Fire Inspector Duncan Allard. “Also, it’s about trying to get separation between plants … you can have plants, and if there’s good separation and no dead leaf litter that would connect them, that makes them more resilient.”
Inspections began in March and are expected to run into November. A map with a rough timeline of when certain neighborhoods will be inspected is available online. Once the inspectors have checked out a parcel, they will leave a door hanger as a notice with a code to access a report online.
“Property owners will receive a bill only if they had defensible space fire code violations that persist upon re-inspection,” according to the site.” Re-inspection Fees can vary but are charged at $98 per quarter hour.” The initial inspection is free, and there is no fee for re-inspection “if violations have been abated.”
The inspectors don’t roam around people’s property when nobody is home. If there isn’t anyone around to let them look, they might just note what is visible from the street.
And if someone has questions about possible violations or recommendations, the inspectors will go over those while at the home, Allard said. “That’s always best because then we get to explain to them in detail what it is we’re letting them know,” he said. “We also give them a heads-up if we are giving them violations.”
The department has a checklist on its website that residents can use to prepare for inspections. Some requirements include removing dead or dying vegetation, making sure tree limbs don’t get too near chimneys, clearing gutters, removing or isolating tree stumps and eradicating flammable waste. Lumber and firewood must be stored 30 feet away from structures and either covered or contained by something ember-proof; gasoline or flammable liquids must be stored in sealed containers indoors or 30 feet away from anything combustible, including buildings and mulch. There is a series of requirements on so-called “ladder fuels” as well, restricting how high certain plants can grow or how low canopies and limbs may remain.
“Some of it’s about the techniques that make a garden; it can still be beautiful, it can have plants in it, and it just needs to be maintained in a way that makes it ember-resistant,” Allard said. He said 90% of fires are caused by ember cast, which can happen even if a home isn’t directly next to a burning fire.
Beyond what the department can legally enforce, it also has a series of recommendations to further protect homes from wildfire, including creating a “zone zero,” or a 5-foot combustible-free buffer zone, around any structure.
“Much of this work is not yet required by the fire code, but it has been adopted by many insurance carriers as best practice,” according to the department’s recommendations.
The fire department is working on a pilot program offering free metal mesh for residents to cover grates. The inspections, meanwhile, have mostly been conducted as information-only, but in the future, in addition to simple recommendations, if the teams find any violations, residents can face fines.
Fire Chief David Sprague said at a recent wildfire safety seminar hosted by Councilwoman Susan Wengraf that large wildfires occur roughly every two decades in and around Berkeley.
“Simply by evaluating the pattern of larger fires, we know that we’re overdue to experience a larger fire in the East Bay hills,” Sprague warned. The more homes in a given neighborhood have undertaken the sort of mitigation work the department recommends, he said, the harder it is for a large fire to spread into that neighborhood, giving firefighters more time to move in and possibly contain it.
“When you examine why some homes survive a wildfire, it may appear random, but in most cases, it’s not,” Interim Assistant Fire Chief Colin Arnold, who runs the department’s WUI division, said at the webinar. “Homes that are hardened and have adequate separation from one another and have fire-resistive landscaping, especially in that first 5 feet around structures, are much more likely to survive.”
