As I’ve been walking our neighborhood, I am sometimes surprised to see neighbors putting in new woodchip mulch, and new wood fencing attached to their homes. I have been contemplating my own front yard makeover, and my wonderful landscaper suggested replacing a metal fence with redwood to make the yard look more consistent with all the other wooden fencing in place. And before I was educated about the Zone 0 dangers, we discussed replanting the old lavenders within Zone 0, right in front of the living room windows.
As long as EMBER is just a recommendation and “best practice,” no one can fault architects or landscape designers for proposing designs that ignore the risks of fire in the wildland urban interface.
I have heard from one neighbor who expressed frustration that they had installed new wood fencing attached to their home just last year, and their service provider did not tell them about the fire risk associated with wood fencing attached to a home.
If you are relying on professionals to give you the best advice in home design and landscaping, their design proposals likely will not include EMBER until EMBER becomes law. We need to enact EMBER as soon as possible even if the effective date is delayed simply to have current projects incorporate the EMBER requirements now. How many projects being undertaken today will need to be fixed when homeowners realize they need to mitigate against fire risk? For that reason, I hope our City Council will enact EMBER as soon as possible. Let’s spare some homeowners the frustration and expense of having to redo their projects. It has the added benefit of keeping us all safe from wildfires.
This document is a personal opinion by the author, and does not purport to represent the views of the website