| By Todd Woody As wildfires raged across Los Angeles in January, a state official parried an email from a resident living on the edge of the conflagration: When would long-delayed regulations designed to protect high-risk homes like hers be implemented? “I do not have a timeline for you,” replied Edith Hannigan, then the executive officer of the California Board of Forestry and Fire Protection, the agency charged with drafting regulations requiring ember-resistant zones around homes. “I hope you and your loved ones are well during this fire siege.” With climate-driven wildfires now capable of raining flaming embers down on far away neighborhoods, scientists say removing vegetation, wood gates and other combustible material within five feet of a home to create an ember-resistant zone is one of the most effective ways to avert an urban firestorm. California in 2020 had enacted a law that mandates the establishment of such protections, called Zone Zero, in wildfire-vulnerable communities.  Destroyed homes in Pacific Palisades in Los Angeles on Jan. 30, 2025. Photographer: Roger Kisby/Bloomberg The forestry board, however, had missed a January 2023 deadline to approve regulations to put Zone Zero into force — and the rules remained in limbo when LA burned. The board had balked at insurance lobbyists and fire officials’ demand for more stringent protections while the governor’s office worried about the cost to homeowners, according to documents obtained by Bloomberg Green in a public records request. And from the Berkeley Hills to Beverly Hills, some homeowners resisted the prospect of removing live oaks, manzanitas and other beloved plants and trees in heavily vegetated urban neighborhoods. In the aftermath of the LA disaster, California Governor Gavin Newsom issued a Feb. 6 executive order directing the forestry board to issue initial draft regulations within 45 days, which it’s done, and adopt a final version by year’s end. But the conflicts that had stalled their enactment remain unresolved. On the morning of Sept. 9, 2020, the skies over the San Francisco Bay Area turned an apocalyptic orange from the smoke of 20 large wildfires burning across Northern California. Less than two weeks later, Newsom signed into law legislation mandating the establishment of ember-resistant zones in areas designated as a “very high fire hazard severity zone.” The forestry board had until Jan. 1, 2023 to issue regulations. By October 2022, that deadline seemed within reach. The draft of proposed regulations was under review by the governor’s office with the expectation that they would be adopted in a few months’ time, according to forestry board staff emails. Crafted with the input of scientists, fire officials, insurance industry representatives and members of the public, the draft still allowed for grass lawns, ground cover and small plants within five feet of a home. “The board, at the time, made it very clear that they did not support a noncombustible zone and wouldn't vote for one,” Hannigan, then the executive officer, recounted in a February 2025 email sent to current California Board of Forestry chair Terrence O’Brien, the day after Newsom’s order to finalize the regulations. Insurance lobbyists had warned the board in a letter that the 2022 draft regulations were too lax, “out of step” with wildfire science and would endanger high-risk communities. The Office of the State Fire Marshall also objected on similar grounds. Both took their concerns to the governor’s office, according to forestry board documents. Homeowners, meanwhile, were raising red flags about the potential cost of complying with Zone Zero. The California Natural Resources Agency, which is in charge of the forestry board, also expressed concerns over the board’s estimate that it would cost homeowners nearly $58 million to comply with the proposed regulations. Insured losses from January’s LA wildfires, on the other hand, could reach $45 billion, according to University of California at Los Angeles researchers. “There's a huge disparity there between what the cost of Zone Zero may be and what happens if you have a catastrophic wildfire,” says O’Brien.  A member of the Berkeley Fire Department fills out a door tag while conducting wildfire defensible space and home hardening inspections. Photographer: Bloomberg/Bloomberg Nevertheless, in August 2023, CNRA officials put the regulations on hold. In her email to O’Brien, Hannigan said the CNRA and the governor’s office spent most of 2024 trying to find funding “that could alleviate that burden on homeowners.” Work on the regulations, she told O’Brien, was expected to be “resurrected” in 2025. Then came the LA firestorms. Firefighters and insurance executives continue to press for a strictly noncombustible Zone Zero, warning that vulnerable communities otherwise will become increasingly uninsurable and risk destruction from urban firestorms. In comments at workshops and emails to the forestry board, though, some homeowners, particularly those on fixed incomes, detailed their worries about the cost of compliance and resisted the loss of greenery and privacy, particularly in neighborhoods where just a few feet separate houses. “The frank reality,” says Yana Valachovic, a University of California wildfire scientist closely involved with the regulations’ development, “is that we have to live differently in California.” Read the full story. To keep track of rapidly evolving wildfire risk, please subscribe. | 
