California fire officials are considering implementing a sweeping ban on bushes, brush, or any combustible materials within five feet of homes in areas considered high risk for wildfires.

Wildfire season started especially early in 2024, and for more than a year now, insurance companies have started refusing to provide coverage to homes or structures in high-risk wildfire areas. State fire officials are hoping to minimize this risk, and as the Chronicle reports, they’re now working on strict new wildfire prevention regulations that would ban bushes, woody plants, pine needles, or anything flammable from being within five feet of homes in wildfire-prone areas.

The rules are being formulated by the California State Board of Forestry and Fire Protection, acting on the requirements of a 2020 law called Senate Bill 3074. And this rule was already supposed to have taken effect, but that board is still working on a draft that’s expected to be completed by the end of the year.

A similar law is already in effect in South Lake Tahoe, where the 2021 Caldor Fire destroyed more than 1,000 structures. This Thursday, that city will start enforcing an ordinance that bans having any combustible materials like bushes, flowers, pine needles, hot tubs, sheds, or wood piles within the five-foot danger zone from homes.

“I ripped up all my flowers,” South Lake Tahoe Fire Marshal Kim George tells the Chronicle. “I’d worked so hard years ago to plant them, but I don’t want to be hypocritical.”

The five-foot zone is considered a critical area where embers from wildfires either die out, or spread to the adjacent structure. Fire prevention groups came up with the five-foot guideline when studying why wildfires burned certain homes, but others were spared.

“Even a small fire can burn across mulch or burn along the fence,” former firefighter and current senior director for wildfire at the Insurance Institute Steve Hawks said to the Chronicle. “It’s really that zone [closest to homes] that can take even the smallest of fires and allow it to get to the house.”

The new regulations still only exist in draft form, and there is no timeframe for when they will be approved, or when enforcement will begin. There may be a phase-in plan, where enforcement will only apply to new homes at first, and then existing homes later.  The rules are expected to only apply in areas that CalFire has designated as Fire Hazard Severity Zones.

Related: Royal Fire Near Lake Tahoe, Possibly Caused By Escaped Campfire, Burns 170 Acres [SFist]

Image: Wide shot of a residential road on a sunny day, with a small house, green and autumnal trees and shrubs, a low hillside, and mountains in the background, on Sousa Drive in Walnut Creek, California, November 22, 2022. Photo courtesy Sftm. (Photo by Gado/Getty Images)