Proposed CA Wildfire Strategy Could be ‘Vital’ to Save Homes

"Zone zero" would require a five-foot radius around California houses to be clear of plants and other combustibles.

By Hannah Ruhoff

Source The Sacramento Bee (TNS)

Sept. 26, 2025

5 min read

Anne Cope, chief engineer for Insurance Institute for Business and Home Safety, speaks during a burn demonstration at the Sacramento City Fire Training Facility at McClellan Airfield on Wednesday.

As if pouring water from a watering can, a firefighter held up a drip torch over a freshly planted rose bush and released a few drops — not of water but of flaming fuel, igniting the bush and the mulch surrounding it.

A group of Sacramento Fire Department firefighters repeated this process on Wednesday, dropping patches of flame around two small, one-room structures meant to simulate houses — complete with siding, roofs, windows, fencing, landscaping and even outdoor furniture — intending to purposefully set them on fire.

The action was part of a burn demonstration hosted by Cal Fire and the Insurance Institute of Business and Home Safety at the Sacramento City Fire Training Facility at McClellan Airfield to demonstrate the effectiveness of “zone zero,” a yet-to-be implemented regulation that would require a 5-foot radius around California homes be cleared of anything combustible including plants, mulch and other flammable materials.

“Zone zero is the most important component of defensible space for the protection of embers,” said Frank Bigelow, Cal Fire’s deputy director in the office of the state fire marshal, who served as one of the burn demonstration’s emcees.

“When your home is in the line of fire, embers can travel miles in front of the flaming front, and if you have ignitable material around your home that embers can land on, it’s going to find those and it’s going to ignite them,” Bigelow said. “So it’s vital that that first 5 feet be clear of organic, combustible or inorganic, hydrocarbon based material that could catch on fire.”

The regulations of zone zero have been in the works for years. In 2020, the California Legislature passed and the governor signed Assembly Bill 3074, which called on Cal Fire to create regulations for a “ember-resistant zone” within 5 feet of structures — now called zone zero.

Since then, the zone zero regulation has been going through the process of workshopping and public comment, and could be implemented early next year, according to Bigelow.

The zone zero regulations are part of a broader series of defensible space laws that have existed in some form since the 1960s, according to Bigelow. Currently, “defensible space,” which Cal Fire defines as buffer zones between a structure and the surrounding area to slow or halt the progress of a fire, is divided into two zones and requires management of vegetation within those zones.

Zone 1 — which extends 30 feet from a building — requires property owners to do things such as clear dead plants, grass as well as leaves and pine needles from yards, roofs and gutters; trim overhanging branches; and keep a 10-foot gap between trees. For Zone 2, which is the area beyond Zone 1 up to 100 feet from a building, property owners are required to keep grass trimmed, space out shrubs and trees, and keep a 10-foot buffer around wood piles.

Zone zero guidelines, in their current iteration, would require property owners — within the 5-foot radius — to use gravel or concrete instead of mulch, replace wooden fencing with fire-resistant alternatives, limit combustible deck furniture and move things like vehicles, garbage containers and boats outside of the zone. According to Cal Fire, zone zero will apply to new construction in Cal Fire’s responsibility area, but home owners in that area will have three years to comply.

The zone zero plan has not been without detractors. According to the San Francisco Chronicle, multiple Los Angeles City Council members objected to zone zero, including Traci Parks whose district includes the area burned by the Palisades Fire. She said the rules are “overly burdensome and built on incomplete science,” according to the Chronicle.

In a Sacramento zone zero regulatory advisory committee meeting on Sept. 22, members of the public voiced their concerns about the regulations, including that the rules could “cause harm” to the ecological environment by having to remove plants, would be cost prohibitive and should be region based.

Commenter Dianna Nicole, who identified herself as an urban ecological horticulturalist, said that zone zero would be a “scientific misfit for urban environments.”

“Zone zero ignores how people actually live in their homes in urban Los Angeles,” Nicole said during her public comment. “Zone zero means the loss of the shade trees that make my home in the valley livable. Without them the house overheats and becomes uninhabitable.”

As firefighters ignited the mulch at McClellan Airfield on Wednesday, the flames quickly left the freshly-planted shrubs in flames before jumping to the side of the home that was not defended by a moat of concrete patio tiles. The home turned into an inferno in less than a half hour and left only charred remains by the end of the presentation. Nearby, the home with the zone zero specifications was untouched — its metal fence and concrete patio protecting it from the flames just feet away.