I’ve been taking the lessons learned in San Diego very seriously this fall. We’ve removed about 50 ugly dying oaks near the forest, the views have improved, and I can sell them for firewood. It feels good to see all that scrubby stuff gone.
Oak, eh?
Too bad I don’t have a truck up to the task.. Do you deliver? ;-)
I burn a lot of wood ..
In my neck of the woods, your sale of firewood qualifies you as a commercial enterprise requiring a Timber Harvest Plan.
County government is not constitutionally required to provide fire services. In the unicorporated areas outside of cities, those services are provided by self-taxing volunteer districts or purely volunteer organizations operated on bake sales and pancake breakfasts. California Forestry and Fire Protection (CDF) provides wildfire fighting service during fire service. The California Code gives them responsibility here for visiting homes and inspecting them for fire safe compliance.
I believe as of 2008, County building codes across the state will change to require building with fire safe materials and clearing parcels of hazards prior to building.
There have been numerous articles stating over 50% of the homes burned were due to flying embers into eaves and lack of bird stops on tile roofs.
Better check on those hazards too.
In June, Mike and Ann Collard hired a company to remove limbs from 11 soaring oaks and two sycamores that surround their home in Glendale, Calif.; a city fire inspector told them that some of the branches were fire hazards because they hung too close to the roof. What the couple didn’t know was that three months earlier, the city council had revised its tree ordinance to include substantial penalties for pruning protected trees without a permit, and doubled the fines for illegally cutting them down.
The city slapped the Collards with a $347,600 fine. “It may as well have been $3 million. There’s no way we could pay that,” says Mr. Collard, a software designer whose wife gave birth to their third child in August.
They won’t have to. Last week, the Collards met with Scott Howard, the Glendale city attorney, who told them the city was dropping the fine altogether. For the most part, the ordinance was intended to dissuade developers from treating the fines as a cost of doing business, Mr. Howard says.”There wasn’t a lot of debate about how [it] will affect an average homeowner.” The law is currently being reviewed by the city council.