Unlike many of my Berkeley hills neighbors, here's why I'm happy to comply with new fire rules

San Francisco Chronicle​

08-07-2025

That weird bush/tree that my ex-fiancé planted before he dumped me for a gal half his age? It's outta here.
All the fruit trees I planted during a season of high hopes but never fruited? I've given them the ax (literally).
The gangly guavas that should have been pruned years ago? Off with their heads.
You can probably tell that I'm not very sentimental about such things. But this I know: Climate change is making wildfires a bigger threat, and if I were to lose my small house in a fire, I would be absolutely wrecked. All my dreams, my life's travails, gone up in smoke? No, thank you.
So that's why I've already begun to adhere to Berkeley's contentious wildfire safety ordinance. No arguments, no fuss, no regrets.
Last month, the Berkeley City Council voted unanimously to implement the new regulations. This comes when, thanks to the rising threat of wildfires, private insurance companies have been canceling homeowners' policies in the Berkeley hills at an alarming rate. I'm fortunate I have one of the good insurance companies and haven't had my policy canceled (yet?).
The new ordinance, which goes into effect at the end of the year, requires homeowners to clear all flammable materials within 5 feet of their house, including plants and trees. Wind-borne embers, wildfire experts say, would then have less chance of igniting the house. The idea is to create more resiliency against wildfire at the wildland-urban interface. My home is on this interface's frontline, as are about 800 other houses in the Berkeley hills.
Houses, of course, are a huge fuel source for fires, and we should do everything we can to minimize the risk of a house-to-house conflagration similar to the Pacific Palisades fire in January that killed 12 people and destroyed more than 6,800 structures or the Oakland hills firestorm in 1991 that killed 25 and destroyed about 3,500 houses, apartments and condominiums.
Makes perfect sense to me that we should take action to try to spare whole neighborhoods from burning down.
But this is Berkeley. Spend five minutes in the online cesspool for our neighborhood, or sit in on one of the City Council meetings, and you'll learn that the new regulations have no shortage of vocal detractors.
There's the strident woman and prolific NextDoor poster who claims she 'speaks for the trees' but who doesn't even own property in the area. (She's a renter, apparently.)
Or the people who have glommed onto a Los Angeles Times op-ed about how camellias next to a house can deflect wildfire, an assertion that, at closer examination, is unproven.
Then there's the many-senior-citizens-on-fixed-incomes-can't-afford-it crowd. City officials say that the average cost to homeowners in the affected area to be compliant with the ordinance will be between $2,000-$5,000. Lower-income residents can seek help with these costs from a $1 million Cal Fire grant and funding from Measure FF, an emergency response and preparedness parcel tax.
Other incensed Berkeley residents have advocated for ignoring the new ordinance and are encouraging lawsuits against the city.
Sure. We're all entitled to our opinions and lived experience. Here's mine: My beloved youngest sister lived in Altadena until Jan. 7, when the Eaton Fire swept through the Los Angeles County city. By some miracle and the valiant efforts of a neighbor and two good Samaritans, her house was spared.
Rows of houses around hers burned to the ground. The wildfire smoke contaminated every nook and cranny in her home. Every stick of furniture, every geegaw, every shred of clothing had to be packed up and taken offsite for decontamination or disposal.
She and her family won't be able to move back into their home for several more months. It's been rough, to say the least.
Here's another thing that would absolutely wreck me: knowing that I could have done something to prevent my home from burning down, but didn't. Or knowing that my burning house ignited my neighbors' houses. Or knowing that our houses caused a burning cascade that spread down the hills to other neighborhoods.
That's why I said adios to two beautiful red maples (yes, that hurt) and the rhododendron that produced such sweet little flowers every spring (that hurt, too).
I have huge respect for our Mayor Adena Ishii, our Fire Chief David Sprague, our Council Member Brett Blackaby and the rest of the City Council for having the foresight and strength to try to build resiliency against this looming hazard.
For all the folks who are yelling at the public meetings and writing long, angry walls of words against the ember ordinance, know that there are plenty of us who are quietly doing the important work of protecting our homes and community against the potentially devastating damage from wildfires.
Oh, and one more thing: Since I turned my overgrown yard into grassland, two fledgling great horned owls, giant floofs of floofy feathers, have been hunting rodents in my backyard. Life is good. Let's keep it that way.