(1) Existing law requires a person, as defined, who owns, leases, controls, operates, or maintains a occupied dwelling or occupied structure in, upon, adjoining specified types of land areas within a very high fire hazard severity zone to maintain defensible space around the structure fire protection or a firebreak, as specified.
Existing law also requires the State Fire Marshal, in consultation with the Director of Forestry and Fire Protection and the Director of Housing and Community Development, to recommend updated building standards that provide for comprehensive site and structure fire risk reduction to protect structures from fires spreading from adjacent structures or vegetation and to protect vegetation from fires spreading from adjacent structures, as provided.
This bill
would require the Office of the State Fire Marshal to develop, in consultation with representatives from local, state, and federal fire services, local government, building officials, utility companies, the building industry, and the environmental community, a model defensible space program to be made available for use by a city, county, or city and county in the enforcement of the defensible space provisions. The bill would set forth required components of the program.
(2) Existing law requires the Director of Forestry and Fire Protection to identify areas in the state, except as specified, as very high fire hazard severity zones based on specified criteria in order to enable public officials to identify measures that will retard the rate of spread and reduce the potential intensity of uncontrolled fires that threaten to destroy resources, life, or property and to require that those measures be taken. Existing law requires the State Fire
Marshal to prepare and adopt a model ordinance that provides for the establishment of very high fire hazard severity zones. Existing law also requires the State Fire Marshal to annually review, revise as necessary, and administer the California Fire Service Training and Education program. Existing law requires a local agency to designate, by ordinance, very high fire hazard severity zones within its jurisdiction.
This bill would require the Office of the State Fire Marshal to develop and make available on their internet website a Wildland-Urban Interface Fire Safety Building Standards Compliance training manual intended for use in the training of local building officials, builders, and fire service personnel. The bill would require the Office of the State Fire Marshal to develop a guidance document for the maintenance of defensible space around residential structures. The bill would also require the Office of the State Fire Marshal to develop and update on a regular
basis a Wildland-Urban Interface Products handbook listing products and construction systems that comply with specified Wildland-Urban Interface Fire Safety building standards.
(3) Existing law establishes the Building Standards Administration Special Revolving Fund in the State Treasury. Existing law provides that moneys in the fund, which include building permit applicant fees, shall be available, upon appropriation, to the Office of the State Fire Marshal, among other state entities, for expenditure in carrying out various provisions relating to building and housing standards, as provided.
This bill would additionally provide that, upon appropriation, moneys in the fund may be available for purposes of carrying the requirements described in paragraphs (1) and (2).