Unincorporated homeowners feel the financial pinch of fire safety

While power outages and the Kincade fire slowed progress, the efforts to rebuild Sonoma Valley following the 2017 wildfires moved along steadily this month. To date, 15 of the 237 homes that burned in Glen Ellen have been restored and are ready for residency, up from seven in September. Another 105 are under construction or in some stage of the permitting process. Kenwood has replaced 14 of the 139 houses lost, while another 65 are in the works. Sonoma has rebuilt three homes, with permits pulled for an additional 11 houses.

While waiting for the first rains of the year, one Glen Ellen neighborhood was busy tackling fire hazards by cutting back tall, dry grass; removing wood piles and overhead branches; and sweeping away leaves - all to comply with defensible space requirements. While costly, many agree the expense is worth the peace of mind. Area biologists, meanwhile, are asking officials to also consider the ecological impact of extensive land management.

Cost of fire safety

Nov. 9 was an unseasonably warm Saturday. Just three days after the Kincade fire was fully contained, the skies had finally cleared of smoke. Around a dozen neighbors at Jack London Estates rose early, grabbed their work gloves and headed down to Lake Idell, their private, but currently dry, lakebed.

There were leaves to rake - thousands of them.

“They just keep coming back,” said Valerie Henderson, an 18-year resident of the subdivision. “You can’t keep up with it.”

The hallmark of the neighborhood is its thickly wooded streets, which create a dense canopy of leaves over most of the property. The bucolic setting has attracted homeowners since the 1930s, but after the 2017 Nuns fire, the plentiful piles of leaves dropped by dozens of trees became a regular reminder of the subdivision’s fire risk. That drew the attention of the Sonoma Valley Fire and Rescue Authority, which flagged the homes for fire safety inspection, part of a $500,000 effort to inspect 3,500 rural properties that sit on less than 5-acres in the county’s unincorporated areas. The 50 homes in Jack London Estates represent about 12% of the 400 Sonoma Valley properties local firefighters inspected last summer, with 200 in Glen Ellen and 200 in Kenwood.

Following inspections in July, homeowners in Jack London Estates were given written notice of the changes needed to comply with the county’s defensible space regulations. The most common problems were branches hanging over homes, tree stumps and those endlessly falling leaves.

“They basically said, ‘You have to do this or we’ll put a lien on your house,’” Henderson said. She spent $3,000 on landscaping work, including $1,500 for tree trimming and $1,500 to have 32 bails of leaves collected and hauled away.

SVFRA Fire Chief Steve Akre said local firefighters do the initial inspection and the first compliance check. If the property owner still doesn’t meet safety requirements, the case is referred to the county, which has the authority to hire a contractor to do the work and bill the owner, usually in the form of a property lien. But inspectors are given some autonomy to work with homeowners and find creative solutions for fire safety.

“We want to work with the property owners collaboratively,” Akre said, acknowledging that compliance can be costly. “There’s a lot of ways to accomplish our goals.”

At Jack London Estates, compromise took the form of concrete blobs on tree stumps. Stumps can collect embers, creating a dangerous, super-heated chamber, which injured a firefighter during the recent Kincade fire, according to the Press Democrat. Removing tree stumps is pricy, especially for neighbors like Henderson, who had about 15 scattered across her half-acre lot. Metal boxes could cover the stumps, the firefighters said, but that was also an expensive solution. So Henderson asked, how about concrete? The inspectors agreed, and for a fraction of the cost, Henderson mixed up a bucket full of cement and slathered the stumps, which now give the illusion of unusual modern art.

While the price of compliance has been significant, neighbors tend to agree it is necessary. Jack London Estates’ Homeowners Association president Shilo Porter said the subdivision also spent about $5,000 to clear out the common spaces on the property, an expense covered by a $100 contribution from each of the 50 homeowners.

“We could not comply within the allotted 30 days. The fire guys were really great about working with us on that,” said Porter. She added that the clean-up wasn’t “entirely a bad thing. We knew we needed to do it.”

Located just off Warm Springs Road, Jack London Estates escaped any damage during the 2017 fires, when dozens of the properties nearby were completely obliterated. They knew they were lucky.

“If the fire had jumped the creek, we would have been gone - poof,” Henderson said.

Unlike many neighborhoods at the time, this community was prepared with a phone tree that ensured everyone evacuated safely.

“Before all hell broke loose on Warm Springs Road, we were all mostly out,” Porter said.

For decades, the neighborhood has hosted regular workdays, when everyone lends a hand to beautify the common spaces. Now, those efforts are focused on fire safety, with a regular goal to keep the copious amounts of leaves raked and removed. Porter said the HOA’s annual dues, currently $300, might have to go up to cover the added expense of vegetation management.

While homeowners understood the need for fire safety, the seemingly arbitrary nature of the inspections sparked some ire. Some properties were flagged for bamboo and wood piles, while others were not. Akre respects the criticism.

“We were a little surprised by the pushback from some neighbors. The first year is tough, I get it. We went from no program at all, to a very robust program,” he said. “But I think we need the program, no question. A huge part of (fire safety) is vegetation management.”

Porter, more so than most neighbors, sees the new regulations as a blessing in disguise.

“Individual responsibility is paramount to a happy neighborhood,” she said. “We all have to do our part.”

For Henderson, the long-term prospects of keeping up her large, wooded property proved too much to bear. She and her partner put their Lakeside Drive house up for sale in October after finding a new place in Fetters Hot Springs.

In defense of trees

In the rush to promote fire-safe landscaping, the Sonoma Ecology Center is working to ensure the environment is considered when discussing defensible space. The county has been busy removing 5,000 dead and dying trees from fire-scorched roads in Sonoma Valley and Santa Rosa, at a cost of $4 million. Removing hazardous trees that threaten roadways and structures is one thing, but “not all trees are created equal,” said biologist Caitlin Cornwall, planning and partnership advisor for the ecology center.

Eucalyptus and Juniper trees are oily and burn dangerously hot, but old-growth oaks are another story. “Trees are cooling, trees are shading,” she said. “And shade is your friend.”

Large trees pull moisture into the ground and create microclimates with their deep roots, protecting soil from becoming dangerously dry. Cutting down trees that are more than 100 feet from structures can increase the risk of wildfire, according to the nonprofit.

In places like Jack London Estates, which sits in the ecologically sensitive riparian forest along Sonoma Creek, biodiversity should be considered when discussing defensible space, Cornwall said.

“The land is serving a whole lot of purposes other than fire safety,” she said. “Fire risk is just one of the factors that needs to influence how we manage our land.”

Since the 2017 wildfires, the center has studied fire safety beyond the traditional concepts of defensible space. They created the pamphlet “Fire smart, water wise and wildlife friendly: Reimaging your landscape” to educate rural property owners. It highlights the benefit of using native plants that hold moisture in the ground; removing wooden fences that fuel fires and impede wildlife; and the benefits of burned trees.

“Unless a blackened branch or tree would damage people or property if it fell, leave it in place until spring leaf-out, when it will be clear how much of it is dead,” the SEC website recommends. “Meanwhile, even trees that are completely dead are still important as habitat, and their roots still hold soil in place and prevent erosion.”

The center is applying for grants to create a program that would allow them to work with homeowners and landscape designers to create landscape that is fire safe, wildlife friendly and water sensitive. They also plan to launch a series of workshops on landscaping in defensible yet ecologically friendly ways. While nothing is scheduled as of yet, events will be posted at sonomaecologycenter.org.