In light of recent firestorms that swept through the San Bernardino Mountains and destroyed hundreds of homes and thousands of acres of land, the Mountain Area Safety Task Force, mountaintop fire safe councils, county operated and independent fire departments throughout the mountains and the Fire Safe Alliance have encouraged the county to make changes to their codes to make living in the mountains safer.

A special press conference was held at the County Government Center on Oct. 7 to outline the details of two new programs the county is instigating to help make the communities safer; both involve the cooperation of mountain property owners.

The event was attended by 3rd District Supervisor Dennis Hansberger as well as representatives from the San Bernardino County Fire Department, CAL FIRE, the Inland Empire Fire Safe Alliance and Forest Care. During the news conference, San Bernardino County Fire Marshal Peter Brierty told print and television reporters the new roof ordinance will affect the owners of approximately 4,000 homes but the new green fuels reduction program will affect all private properties, or about 89,000 parcels in the San Bernardino Mountains.

Brierty told reporters the federal funds the county received through the efforts of Senators Dianne Feinstein and Jerry Lewis following the 2003 Old Fire have been well used but now, five years later, it's time to transfer the responsibility to property owners to keep their own property as fire safe as possible.

“This is a consolidated effort,” Chief Brierty said. “To survive and live in the forest we have to take responsibility for ourselves as property owners.” Third District Supervisor Dennis Hansberger concurred: “This plan has long-term advantages. This is the right and responsible thing to do. If my house is a threat to my neighbor's that's not right.”

Effective Nov. 6 the county will require property owners to thin live bushes and very small trees to allow clearance so the limbs and branches are off the ground and further apart. Up until now the county's ordinance only required residents to remove dead fuels such as pineneedles and dead shrubs and trees from their property.

The new changes will require owners to maintain more defensible space around their homes so they will need to cut back, not necessarily remove, small shrubs and trees.Cutting the branches that touch or are near the ground will help keep the fire from quickly spreading along the ground and engulfing more trees and brush.

The new ordinance will bring the county more in line with state fire hazard abatement requirements and even go beyond the state requirement. While the new ordinance retains the current provision for 100-foot defensible space zones, property owners who have a “hazard” within 100 feet of their neighbor's home or another structure are now responsible for abating (fixing) the fire hazard up to their property line.

A fire department spokesman said excessive fuels around homes have contributed to wildfires and there is ample evidence a home where the owner has not cleared brush can and will cause damage or possibly destroy adjacent properties where the owners have cleared their sites. This issue has been a contentious one for many years in the mountain communities where one neighbor has cleared his own property but the adjacent neighbor has not.

Brierty said the county would work with fire chiefs and fire safe councils in the mountain communities to strategize on how to make the program work. Supervisor Hansberger, who was in office during the 2003 and 2007 fires, said the new ordinance is “simply something we have to have. It's not should we do something…it's what should we do.”

Following the Old Fire, Brierty said, officials looked at homes in Deer Lodge Park where a lot of thinning work had been done to see what survived the fire and what didn't and to see how many houses were saved as the result of the clearing effort.

Shawna Meyer from the San Bernardino National Forest's program Forest Care explained their organization would be able to help residents pay to clear their properties to meet the new requirements, just as they have been doing in the mountains for the past several years. Residents are encouraged to log onto www.sbnf.org or call (888) 883-8446 for information on how Forest Care may be able to help. If applicable, Forest Care can help pay up to 75 percent of the costs for fuel removal off private properties.

WOOD SHAKE ROOFS

The picturesque but highly flammable shake shingle roofs will be a thing of the past in the unincorporated areas of the San Bernardino Mountains once the board of supervisors officially adopts an ordinance that makes significant changes to portions of their development code. The supervisors are set to adopt the changes during their Oct. 21 meeting and the ordinance will be effective January 1, 2009.

The changes will require property owners who have wood shake roofs to replace them by July 1, 2014, with non-flammable, non-wood, Class A roofing materials. With the 2003 Old Fire and last year's Slide and Grass Valley Fires that destroyed hundreds of homes, county fire officials, as well as the board of supervisors, hope property owners will not only cooperate with the new requirements but agree the time has come to protect their homes and their neighbor's homes as well.

For many years people building homes in the mountains have not been allowed to use shake shingles and County Building Codes already prohibit the wooden roofs when new homes are built. Supervisor Hansberger said the last time shake roofs were approved for mountain houses was in the 1980s and “they have passed their useful life.”

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