SOUTH LAKE TAHOE, Calif. – The City of South Lake Tahoe is working to stay ahead of increasing wildfire concerns. “I personally feel that the Caldor Fire was a warning,” Fire Marshal Kim George said to City Council on June 4 while presenting the city’s first defensible space ordinance.

Officially adopted at council on June 18, the ordinance builds on state code defensible space requirements which guided city defensible space inspections in the past.

By creating its own defensible space ordinance, the city can expand requirements to business parcels, when in the past, requirements could only be applied to residential parcels since that’s what the state code applied to.

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One of those codes, for example, is Public Resource Code 4291. It has requirements for defensible space in mountainous areas or in very high fire severity zones, which George says almost all of Tahoe is in. However, this code only applies to residential parcels.

The city’s new ordinance is also getting ahead of the game, and requiring a five foot noncombustible perimeter around structures. The addition of this zone potentially makes South Lake Tahoe the most strict in the state, the Fire Marshal says.

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This Zone 0, brought about by Assembly Bill 3074, doesn’t require jurisdictions enforce it on existing structures until 2026, but the fire department wants to be proactive in hopes it has more than one benefit.

“We are trying to stay ahead of the game, which is potentially appealing to insurance agencies,” especially if the California Department of Insurance moves to catastrophe modeling, George told the Tribune, which allows insurance providers to consider jurisdictional proactive measures such as this ordinance. “We are trying to do everything we possibly can to help the insurance crisis we are seeing throughout our zip code.”

The science backed five foot zone around structures has proven to be effective against fire exposure via embers. The Fire Marshal explains, “Embers can travel a mile ahead of the fire which is why it is so important to minimize ignitability.”

By noncombustible, this Zone 0 should have no woody vegetation or material that could propagate a fire such as stored firewood or pine needles. The ordinance requires rock, non-combustable mulch or well irrigated herbaceous vegetation to stabilize the soil in that zone.

George says the city is allowing mature trees within that zone, but warns it may be a different story for insurance. However, “the science is not suggesting that tree trunks are the problem.”

This zone adds to two zones already implemented in inspections, each with differing requirements and specific distances from structures. Those are outlined on Cal Fire’s website, readyforwildfire.org.

George says this ordinance focuses on defensible space, but they do encourage home hardening as well.

The ordinance will apply to all properties in city limits at any given point, except for state or federal land. The fire department conducts defensible space inspections seasonally, completing about one third of the city each year. Grant funding through the Tahoe Resource Conservation District funds the inspections.

Property owners can request inspections. George says they often get requests due to insurance issues or individuals hoping to be proactive.

“This is intended as an educational tool,” Fire Chief Jim Drennan told council on June 4, “this is not intended as a hammer.”

George says everyone who chooses to live in the forest has a responsibility, “…not only for their own home’s protection, but for their neighbors and entire community also.”

The department hopes people adopt the philosophy and that defensible space becomes common place.

She adds, “Defensible space can work, but only if it is done.”

The ordinance will go into effect July 18.