Berkeley proposes strict fire safety rules, inspired by lessons learned in LA

The day the Palisades Fire broke out, four Berkeley Fire Department personnel piled into an engine truck and motored south. 

“It was moonscaped down in Santa Monica when we got there,” Acting Captain Justin Ironside said in an interview. Entire neighborhoods were “completely demolished,” Ironside said, and out in areas of open hillside there was “not a leaf still on a tree, not a leaf still on a bush — scorched earth.”

The Palisades Fire would eventually burn over 23,000 acres, destroy nearly 7,000 structures and damage over 1,000 more, according to the California Department of Forestry and Fire Protection. 

The fire also killed 12 people.

City fire officials and academic experts say fires like that rolling into Berkeley are inevitable. That’s why BFD has kicked off a campaign to adopt stringent new rules requiring residents to manage vegetation around their homes, which the City Council will take up this month. Paired with new statewide construction requirements, the department hopes the precaution will make Berkeley more resilient when that next wildfire does come over the hills.

BFD is looking to impose new restrictions in the most at-risk parts of the city beginning next year. In the nearer term, the department is also recruiting for new fire inspection interns and has a survey out for Berkeleyans to weigh in on wildfire hazards.

Neighborhoods reduced to ‘chimneys and foundations’

BFD went to Southern California to help fight the devastating Palisades Fire in 2025. Credit: Berkeley Fire Department

The BFD crew that went to the Los Angeles area in January — Ironside, Apparatus Operator Eric Espinoza and Firefighter-Paramedics Tanner Ready and Fred Almendarez — took its first shift right away on the morning of Jan. 8.

By noon that first day the Palisades Fire had grown to nearly 12,000 acres, four times the size it had been just 12 hours earlier, according to Cal Fire.

“It was impressive — in a sad way — to see how destructive that the fire was,” Ironside told Berkeleyside, “similar to the Oakland Hills fire, when it was just chimneys and foundations standing.”

That first shift stretched 48 hours with only short breaks for rest. Firefighters from around the country were still rolling in, but firefighters from the area finally got a much-needed break. Once more teams were available, the Berkeley crew went to 24-hour shifts for the rest of their stay.

As lax as city and state rules are now on fire safety, from vegetation and landscaping to building requirements, a fast-moving wildfire is likely to outpace Berkeley’s firefighting resources, BFD Chief David Sprague told councilmembers in a committee meeting last month.

On top of that, officials have known for years that the twisting hillside roads in the most at-risk neighborhoods are not equal to the task of evacuating those neighborhoods after a fire starts, to say nothing of moving fire trucks in at the same time.

‘At the mercy of Mother Nature’

Cooperation, more formally known as mutual aid, is the backbone of California’s firefighting society. Berkeley’s firefighters know they can rely on their colleagues in surrounding cities to come to their aid when needed, as they did for Los Angeles. But Diablo Wind-driven fire events, like the one that erased wide swathes of Northeast Berkeley in 1923 and the lethal Tunnel Fire in 1991, typically keep burning until the wind changes.

Berkeley firefighters work to protect structures near Malibu and Santa Monica during the Palisades Fire in January 2025. Credit: Berkeley Fire Department

“You’re kind of at the mercy of Mother Nature,” Ironside said of wind-driven fires. “At that point you’re just hoping preparations that were made ahead of time are enough to help everybody.”

“There’s, unfortunately, not a lot anybody can do for it,” he added.

BFD is pinning high hopes on creating a buffer zone in Northeast Berkeley, where officials argue their proposed new home hardening and landscaping rules could help limit the spread of a fire to the rest of the city, in part because that’s the likeliest route a wildfire would take into Berkeley. The zone runs along Grizzly Peak Boulevard to the west and Wildcat Canyon Road to the east, from the Summit Reservoir down to Centennial Drive.

Homes in that zone would be barred from having anything combustible — such as trees, shrubs, debris or wooden fencing — within five feet of structures. The proposed rules would also tightly regulate vegetation like hedges and shrubs up to 30 feet away, and require homeowners to manage annual grasses anywhere on their property, among other things.

Berkeley firefighters work to protect structures near Malibu and Santa Monica during the Palisades Fire in January 2025. Credit: Berkeley Fire Department

The proposal largely mirrors Cal Fire’s recommendations for defensible space zones, which set up concentric rings of mitigation around houses and other structures. But BFD is asking for a series of rule changes that will give the city the power to actually enforce those fire safety requirements in the Berkeley Hills. 

Regulations for the innermost zone, from 0 to 5 feet around buildings, have been part of state law since 2020, and homeowners in Cal Fire high- and very-high-hazard areas technically have to adhere to the so-called Zone 0 restrictions. Regulators in Sacramento have not yet figured out how to enforce them, however.

The other two proposed zones — from 5 to 30 feet out, and 30 to 100 feet out — are sketched out in state law as well, but with more nebulous requirements that homeowners “maintain defensible space.” (BFD keeps a checklist on its website of what the state and city fire codes currently require.) 

Two neighborhoods to start

Fire officials in Berkeley have proposed phasing in the new defensible space requirements a little at a time, beginning in 2026 with new restrictions for the Grizzly Peak and Panoramic Hill areas. Ultimately BFD wants to phase in all the neighborhoods in the Berkeley Hills and several more further west, including UC Berkeley’s main campus and other chunks of eastern Berkeley.

The rules cleared the City Council’s Public Safety Policy Committee last month, and are tentatively scheduled to go to the full council April 15.

Berkeley moved through coastal Southern California during the Palisades Fire in January 2025. Credit: Berkeley Fire Department

Berkeley has also set up an online survey so residents can weigh in on whether or how BFD should expand on state maps that define areas at highest risk of wildfire. The survey went live last Wednesday and closes at 5 p.m. Tuesday. Generally speaking, Berkeley’s city-specific wildfire hazard zones reflect those established by Cal Fire, but BFD has proposed a map with larger high- and very-high-hazard zones based on their knowledge of building density, roadway infrastructure and local home hardening, or rather the lack of it.

The city is also taking applications through Monday for the next class of Wildland Division interns, who will inspect Berkeley homes in parts of the city where wildfire is most likely to pose a risk, checking for defensible space and hardened homes. The city will interview candidates in April and send its picks for training in June. The internships pay $18.67 an hour and are open to applicants aged 18 to 25 who will have graduated high school by June.