Existing law requires a person, as defined, who owns, leases, controls, operates, or maintains a building or structure in, upon, or adjoining specified types of land areas to maintain around and adjacent to a building or structure fire protection or a firebreak, as specified.

Existing law also requires the State Fire Marshal, in consultation with the Director of Forestry and Fire Protection and the Director of Housing and Community Development, to recommend building standards that provide for comprehensive space and structure defensibility to protect structures from fires spreading from adjacent structures or vegetation and vegetation from fires spreading from adjacent structures.

This bill would require the Office of the State Fire Marshal to develop, in cooperation with the Board of Forestry, and in consultation with representatives from local, state, and federal fire services, local government, building officials, the building industry, and the environmental community, a model defensible space program to be made available for use by a city, county, or city and county in the enforcement of the defensible space provisions. The bill would set forth required components of the program. The bill would also authorize the local agency for enforcement of the program to recover the actual cost of abatement and to place it as a special assessment or lien on the property.

Existing law requires the Director of Forestry and Fire Protection to identify areas in the state, except as specified, as very high fire hazard severity zones based on specified criteria in order to enable public officials to identify measures that will retard the rate of spread and reduce the potential intensity of uncontrolled fires that threaten to destroy resources, life, or property and to require that those measures be taken. Existing law requires the State Fire Marshal to prepare and adopt a model ordinance that provides for the establishment of very high fire hazard severity zones. Existing law also requires the State Fire Marshal to annually review, revise as necessary, and administer the California Fire Service Training program. Existing law requires a local agency to designate, by ordinance, very high fire hazard severity zones within its jurisdiction.

The bill would require the Office of the State Fire Marshal to develop a Wildland-Urban Interface Fire Safety Building Standard Standards compliance training manual intended for use in the training of local building officials, builders, and fire service personnel. The bill would also require that office to develop a Wildland-Urban Interface Products handbook listing products and construction systems that comply with specified Wildland-Urban Interface Fire Safety building standards. The bill would require the State Fire Marshal to establish a fee to be paid by specified entities to support these activities. The bill would require the Director of Forestry and Fire Protection, not later than March 31, 2009, to report to the appropriate committees of the Legislature on the impacts benefits of establishing fire risk maps for the State of California, including those that reflect fire risks to structures and the ecosystem during the most fire-prone period of the year, and to include recommendations for counties for which map development should be prioritized and the identification of identifying possible funding sources to cover the costs associated with fire risk map development.