Existing law requires the State Fire Marshal to classify lands within state responsibility areas into fire hazard severity zones and, by regulation, designate fire hazard severity zones and assign to each zone a rating reflecting the degree of severity of fire hazard that is expected to prevail in the zone, as provided. Existing law describes state responsibility areas for these purposes as areas of the state in which the financial responsibility of preventing and suppressing fires has been determined by the State Board of Forestry and Fire Protection to be primarily the responsibility of the state. Existing law also requires the State Fire Marshal to identify areas of the state that are not state responsibility areas as moderate, high, and very high fire hazard severity zones based on specified criteria.
This bill would revise and recast these provisions by, among other things, replacing the requirement that the State Fire Marshal classify lands within state responsibility areas into fire hazard severity zone requirements zones with a requirement that the State Fire Marshal Marshal, on or before an unspecified date, designate, by regulation, a wildfire mitigation area in the state, excluding federal lands. The bill would require the wildfire mitigation area to be based on fuel loading,
slope, fire weather,
overall fire hazard severity, and other relevant factors identified by the Director of Forestry and Fire Protection as a major cause of wildfire spread. The bill would require the State Fire Marshal to consider and incorporate, as relevant, any local ordinances that designate fire hazard severity on local lands into the wildfire mitigation area designation and provide maps on its internet website that show the new wildfire mitigation area overlaid with the preexisting state and local fire hazard severity zones.
Existing law,
law requires the State Fire Marshal to identify areas of the state that are not state responsibility areas as moderate, high, and very high fire hazard severity zones based on specified criteria. Existing law, applicable to lands that are not state responsibility areas, requires a local agency to designate, by ordinance transmitted to the State Board of Forestry and Fire Protection, moderate, high, and very high fire hazard severity zones in its jurisdiction within 120 days of receiving recommendations from the State Fire Marshal. Existing law also requires a local agency to post a notice at the office of the county recorder, county assessor, and county planning agency identifying the location of the map provided by the State Fire Marshal.
This bill would, upon the adoption by the State Fire Marshal of the wildfire mitigation area,
area regulations, repeal the requirement requirements that a local agency designate fire hazard severity zones. zones and post a notice of the map provided by the State Fire Marshal.
Existing law, applicable to lands within state responsibility areas, prohibits the State Fire Marshal from adopting the designation of a zone and assignment of a rating until the proposed regulation has been transmitted to the board of supervisors of the county in which the zone is located and a public hearing has been held in that county, as provided. Existing law requires the State Fire Marshal to periodically review designated zones and, as necessary, revise zones or their ratings or repeal the designation of zones.This bill would revise and recast these provisions by, among other things, instead requiring the State Fire Marshal, when publishing the notice of proposed action applicable to the designation of the wildfire mitigation area, to also transmit a copy to the board of supervisors of the county and the city council of each city in which the wildfire mitigation area is
located, and to conduct at least 3 public hearings during the rulemaking process. The bill would also require the State Fire Marshal to periodically review, and, if necessary, update the wildfire mitigation area, and notwithstanding this requirement, require the State Fire Marshal to annually account for modifications to the state responsibility area as adopted by the State Board of Forestry and Fire Protection, and make any necessary adjustments to the wildfire mitigation area. The bill would exempt these revisions from specified adoption requirements and the Administrative Procedure Act, as provided.Existing law, applicable to lands that are not state responsibility areas, requires a person who owns, leases, controls, operates, or maintains an occupied dwelling or occupied structure in, upon, or adjoining a mountainous area, forest-covered land, shrub-covered land, grass-covered land, or land that is covered with flammable material, which area
or land is within a very high fire hazard severity zone designated by the local agency, to comply with specified defensible space requirements, including maintaining a defensible space of 100 feet from each side and from the front and rear of the structure, as specified. A violation of these requirements is a crime.
This bill would revise and recast these provisions by, among other things, requiring the State Fire Marshal to adopt, by regulation, defensible space requirements, as provided, and, upon the adoption of those regulations, repealing the above-described defensible space requirements applicable to land with a very high fire hazard severity zone designated by the local agency and replacing those requirements with similar
instead impose the above-described defensible space requirements applicable to on a person who owns, leases, controls, operates, or maintains an occupied dwelling or occupied structure in, upon, or adjoining a mountainous area, forest-covered land, shrub-covered land, grass-covered land, or land that is covered with flammable material, which area or land is within the wildfire mitigation area. By expanding the scope of a crime, the bill would impose a state-mandated local program. a very high fire hazard area as identified by the State Fire Marshal and is not a state responsibility area.
Existing law also requires a person who owns, leases, controls, operates, or maintains a building or structure in, upon, or adjoining a mountainous area, forest-covered lands, shrub-covered lands, grass-covered lands, or land that is covered with flammable material to maintain a defensible space of 100 feet from each side and from the front and rear of the structure, as specified. A violation of these requirements is a crime.Existing law requires the persons described above to use more intense fuel reductions between 5 and 30 feet around the structure, and to create an ember-resistant zone within 5 feet of the structure, based on regulations promulgated by the State Board of Forestry and Fire Protection, as provided. Existing law
requires the board, in consultation with the State Fire Marshal, to develop, periodically update, and post on its internet website a guidance document on fuels management, as provided. Existing law requires the State Fire Marshal to provide notice to affected residents describing specified components of the specified defensible space requirements before imposing penalties for a violation of these requirements, as provided.This bill would revise and recast these provisions by, among other things, replacing the requirement for an ember-resistant zone within 5 feet of the structure with a requirement for more intense fuel reductions to be utilized between 0 and 5 feet of the structure, as provided. By expanding the scope of a crime, the bill would impose a state-mandated local program. The bill would instead require the State Fire Marshal to develop, periodically update, and post on its internet website a guidance document on fuels management, as provided. The bill
would also eliminate the State Fire Marshals above-described duty to make reasonable efforts to provide notice to affected residents, as provided.Existing law requires the State Board of Forestry and Fire Protection to adopt regulations implementing minimum fire safety standards related to defensible space, as provided. Under existing law, these regulations apply to the perimeters and access to all residential, commercial, and industrial building construction within state responsibility areas approved after January 1, 1991, and within lands classified and designated as very high fire hazard severity zones, that are not within state responsibility areas, after July 1, 2021, as provided.This bill would instead require the State Fire Marshal to adopt regulations implementing minimum fire safety standards related to lands within the wildfire mitigation area, as provided, and apply these regulations to the perimeters and
access to all residential, commercial, and industrial building construction within state responsibility areas approved after January 1, 1991, and within the wildfire mitigation area, as provided. The bill would, upon the adoption of these regulations, repeal the above-described minimum fire safety standards within lands classified and designated as very high fire hazard severity zones, as provided.Existing law requires specified sellers of real property that is located in a high or very high fire hazard severity zone, as identified by the Director of Forestry and Fire Protection, to provide specified disclosures and documentation, as provided.This bill would instead require the above-described sellers of real property that is located in the wildfire mitigation area, as identified by the State Fire Marshal, to comply with those disclosure and documentation requirements, as provided.Under existing law, any building standard adopted or proposed by state agencies shall be submitted to, and approved or adopted by, the California Building Standards Commission prior to codification.Existing law requires the State Fire Marshal, in consultation with the Director of Forestry and Fire Protection and the Director of Housing and Community Development and pursuant to the above-described process for adopting or proposing building standards, to propose fire protection building standards applicable to fire hazard severity zones, including very high fire hazard severity zones, designated by the State Fire Marshal, and other areas designated by a local agency, as provided. Upon identification of high fire hazard severity zones, existing law requires the Office of the State Fire Marshal and the Department of Housing and Community Development to propose, and the California Building Standards Commission to adopt, expanded
application of the building standards adopted pursuant to this process to high fire hazard severity zones during the next triennially occurring California Building Standards Code adoption cycle.This bill would revise and recast these provisions by, among other things, instead requiring the State Fire Marshal, in consultation with the Director of Housing and Community Development and pursuant to the above-described process for adopting or proposing building standards, to propose fire protection building standards applicable to buildings in the wildfire mitigation area designated by the State Fire Marshal, as provided. The bill would require the Office of the State Fire Marshal and the Department of Housing and Community Development to propose, and the California Building Standards Commission to adopt, the building standards adopted pursuant to this process to the wildfire mitigation area during the next triennially occurring California Building Standards Code
adoption cycle.This bill would also require the State Fire Marshal to establish wildfire mitigation measures in the wildfire mitigation area, including Wildland Urban Interface building standards, statewide minimum fire safety regulations, state defensible space requirements, real estate hazard disclosure requirements, defensible space real estate compliance requirements, subdivision review requirements, and safety element review requirements, as provided. To the extent these wildfire mitigation measures would impose new duties on local agencies, the bill would impose a state-mandated local program.The California Constitution requires the state to reimburse local agencies and school districts for certain costs mandated by the state. Statutory provisions establish procedures for making that reimbursement.This bill would provide that with regard to certain mandates
no reimbursement is required by this act for a specified reason.With regard to any other mandates, this bill would provide that, if the Commission on State Mandates determines that the bill contains costs so mandated by the state, reimbursement for those costs shall be made pursuant to the statutory provisions noted above.
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