Published in the Ojai Valley News / Ventura County Sun - October 3, 2025

Zone 0 – the five-foot space around a structure – plays an important role in managing fire risk at the wildland urban interface. Santa Ana blown embers accumulate around structures, forcing themselves through attic vents and under doors. Caught embers smolder at the base of fencing, wood piles, and in the branches of dry plants. If embers catch a house on fire, extreme heat, wind, and flames can quickly spread fire to nearby homes in dense suburban and urban areas. We saw this happen in in the Palisades, Eaton, and Mountain fires. Firefighting resources were quickly overwhelmed by a combination of wind, heat and flames. Thousands of homes were destroyed, communities devastated, lives lost. We can do more to protect our neighborhoods.

In 2020, the California legislature passed AB 3074, the fire prevention: wildfire risk: defensible space: ember-resistant zones bill. It requires more fuel reductions between five and 30 feet and the creation of an ember-resistant zone within five feet of structures – Zone 0. The legislature put the State Board of Forestry and Fire Protection in charge of the development of regulations, and Governor Newsom issued an Executive Order in February 2025 directing the Board of Forestry (BOF) to accelerate the adoptions for Zone 0. This is where the Zone 0 regulation train left the tracks.

The BOF is a government-appointed body within the Department of Forestry and Fire Protection. Its mandate is to protect and enhance the state's unique forest and wildland resources. That includes major commercial and non-commercial stands of timber, areas reserved for parks and recreation, woodlands, brush-range watersheds, and all private and state lands that contribute to California's forest resource wealth.

This board, comprised primarily of northern California lumber and fire industry traditionalists, has set out to determine mitigation requirements for our dense southern California communities. Instead of focusing on the undisputed risks, they have pursued an “all plants burn” approach that fails to consider the fire-suppressing value of trees and plants or the financial costs, health consequences, or environmental damage caused by their removal. They are the hammer; plants are the nails. 

Scores of Wildland Urban Interface (WUI) experts have testified repeatedly before the Board, warning members that their process ignores important scientific findings about the ways that irrigated, healthy landscaping protects homes. You can read their up-to-date advice in written comments to the BOF, in major newspapers, and in scientific papers, but you will not see it reflected in BOF drafts of Zone 0 regulations. The BOF is pushing forward, circling their wagons, determined to hold the course until the regs are adopted on December 31st, 2025.  

Here's what is about to happen. The Board of Forestry Zone 0 regulations will become the official government position on Zone 0 and eventually on Zones 1 (five-30 feet) and 2 (30-100 feet from structures). As a result, homeowners will be at the mercy of their insurance companies who will hold up the BOF regulations as proof that irrigated landscaping is a WUI fire risk.

Here in Southern California our homes are close together. We can’t just move our potted plants, bushes, and trees out of the five-foot zone. There isn’t space. Instead, we’re talking about the removal of huge quantities of irrigated landscape and potted plants. That’s millions of homes forced to strip away plants that clean the air of pollution, provide shade that lessens the electricity demands of air conditioning, shade that cools our sidewalks, driveways, and backyards making them valuable extensions of our homes. The plants in our yards provide vital habitat for beloved butterflies, birds, and native bees. They soothe us and draw us outside for exercise and companionship. These are things that matter to us but not to the home insurance industry. Fire is the threat that costs them money, not illnesses worsened by pollution, extreme heat, loss of community connections and peace of mind.

Industry professionals will tell you that opposing Zone 0 regulations means valuing esthetics more than people’s lives and homes, and that removing green, irrigated plants around our homes is a necessary sacrifice. They are ignoring evidence that hedges and trees catch embers, keeping them away from the foundations. They are ignoring evidence that California native plants require very little water to stay well hydrated and that hydrated plants snuff out embers. They are refusing to talk about actual mitigation costs, millions -- even billions -- of dollars, that would be much better spent installing smaller mesh screens on attic vents, replacing wood gates and fencing with metal where they touch the house, and removing highly flammable undesirable plants.

Before Californians are forced to finance questionable home fire protection at the tune of billions of dollars, we should consider investing in more effective and beneficial approaches to neighborhood fire protection, some ideas are irrigated green belts between wildlands and homes and state of the art new housing at the wildland urban interface that is built to current fire codes and will protect older homes within from wildland fire embers.

The 2025 Zone 0 regulations should only include the most significant mitigations, those that are undisputed. Today’s draft is a gift to the home insurance industry that transfers an extraordinary cost burden to individual homeowners while ignoring damages to our health, our environment, and our climate. I urge you to contact your state elected officials. Tell them we want common sense, affordable Zone 0 regulations.

Betsy Connolly

Zone 0 – Conejo Valley