Santa Barbara County Fire Department
officially declared the start of fire season Monday, after a dry winter left
hillsides ripe for wildfires.
Officials are stressing the
importance and legal necessity of creating a 100-foot defensible space around
rural homes in the Valley.
“It’s not only important
and critical, it’s the law,” said Eli Iskow,
public information officer for the Santa Barbara County Fire Department.
“And if they don’t comply with the law, we have to call a landscaper
to come in and do their job for them.”
Firefighters are inspecting over
1,000 structures throughout the Valley to ensure the structures are properly
landscaped, said Capt. Mike Held of the Santa Ynez fire station. Of the
structures inspected, he said some 10 percent are found in violation of the
law. Firefighters are forced to call landscapers for about one percent of the
cited structures. The owner is then charged for the landscaping.
Iskow also said that a structure’s
defensible space determines its priority level when firefighters are attempting
to save structures because of the danger involved in approaching a structure
surrounded by fuel for a wildfire. “If houses are prepared as they should
be, chances of surviving an otherwise destructive brush fire are huge,”
he said.