Berkeley is poised to pass a law banning combustible materials being kept within five feet of homes in high wildfire-risk areas, which means people would have to rip out the plants right next to their houses, and many aren’t happy about it.
Yesterday's large grass fire in the Oakland Hills served as an unwelcome reminder that wildfire season 2025 may already be upon us. But heck, the LA wildfires this past January were an unwelcome reminder that it is maybe wildfire season year-round in California these days.
So the City of Berkeley is being proactive, as the Chronicle reports that Berkeley City Council will vote on a measure next week to ban houses from having plants within five feet of their homes, hoping to create a five-foot buffer zone so embers from fires don’t catch the plants, and therefore the adjacent houses, on fire.
The five-foot law would not apply to all of Berkeley, just those areas considered to have the highest wildfire risk. And the rule would be implemented in phases. Phase 1 (shown in red, next to Tilden Park) would be first, representing 900 homes between the neighborhoods of Grizzly Peak and Panoramic Hill. But Phases 2 and 3 (represented in shades of yellow) would also have to follow suit in the coming years.
The law hopes to create a “non-combustible buffer area” that is proven to make homes much less likely to catch fire in wildfire situations where there are high winds and flying embers.
It specifically requires homeowners to “Remove all combustible items such as firewood, potted plants, outdoor furniture, trash cans, pet houses, lawn tools, sheds, hot tubs, etc from this zone.”
Taking out plants and hot tubs? You can imagine this has some Berkeley hippies seeing red.
“It just feels horrific to anyone who loves nature,” Tilden Park homeowner Rhonda Gruska, told the Chronicle. “We care about the plants. We don’t want to rip them out and put in cement.”
That said, a similar law could be coming statewide, though it would not apply to the whole state, just high-risk wildfire areas. Parts of South Lake Tahoe already require this five-foot buffer zone, after the 2021 Caldor Fire destroyed more than 1,000 structures in that area. And many insurance companies are already requiring the same five-foot buffer zone, so the idea is certainly not that extreme.
“No one said it’s easy, but this is the new reality if we want to give us a fighting chance,” Berkeley City Councilmember Brent Blackaby told the Chronicle. And Blackaby himself lives in an area where he would have to clear out the plants within five feet of his house.
Image: Mx. Granger via Wikimedia Commons
