After public hearings in April and May, the Napa County Board of Supervisors adopted a weed abatement ordinance for unincorporated Napa County (with the exception of unincorporated land within the American Canyon Fire Protection District).

This year the ordinance becomes effective June 22. Starting in 2008, properties throughout the county will be required to comply with the Napa County Weed Abatement Ordinance by June 1 each year.

A weed abatement ordinance is necessary in Napa County because it is an important part of creating defensible space. Napa County has a long history of wildland fires — more than half of the county’s approximately 500,000 acres have burned during the last 60 years. Defensible space is the single most important feature that can protect your family and your property in a wildland fire.

Defensible space has been required in some form or another since the 1960s, but Napa County has struggled to find a way to effectively enforce the requirements of Public Resource Code 4291 and the California Fire Code. The new Weed Abatement Ordinance outlines property owners’ responsibilities and creates an efficient process to deal with properties that do not comply with the requirements.

Weed abatement programs in California have a proven record: Damage assessment studies from the catastrophic wildland fires of 2003 demonstrated that communities with effective weed abatement programs are far more likely to survive wildland fires than those without such programs. In 2003 one firefighter lost his life in a Southern California wildland fire while protecting a structure with inadequate defensible space. The tragedy was repeated in 2006 when five firefighters assigned to structure protection were killed during another Southern California wildland fire. Experience with these and other wildland fires showed that defensible space was key to saving communities, structures and the firefighters assigned to protect them.

Weed abatement and other defensible space measures also simplify firefighting. In a wildland fire not requiring defense of urban developments, resources can be focused on containing the perimeter of the fire to stop it from spreading. In a wildland-urban interface (WUI) fire, resources must be deployed defensively to protect structures in the fire’s path instead of working on perimeter fire control.

When this change in strategy is necessary, fires in the WUI tend to become larger and require more resources than a wildland-only fire. Properties that have adequate defensible space will require little if any protection by fire department resources.

The new Napa County Weed Abatement Ordinance asks property owners in high fire risk areas to provide 100 feet of defensible space around all structures and occupied buildings on their property, or to the property line if it is less than 100 feet from any structure. (This has been required throughout much of the county by state regulations for decades.)

The new ordinance also requires the owner of a property adjacent to parcels with occupied buildings to provide defensible space of 100 feet from all occupied buildings, regardless of property lines. To do this, the property owner may either control weeds and other wildland fire fuels to assure that adequate defensible space exists, or allow access to owners of neighboring parcels with occupied buildings so that they may create and maintain this adequate defensible space.

After Friday, Cal Fire will inspect properties throughout the county focusing on high risk communities and responding to neighbor or community concerns. If a property is inspected and found to be not in compliance with the ordinance, a “Notice to Abate Fire Hazard” will be sent to the property owner, who will have 21 days to comply. If the property is still not in compliance after 21 days, the county will use a private contractor to reduce the fire hazard, and the property owner will be billed for the cost of the contractor and fire department staff time for the abatement. Non-payment will be turned over to the county auditor as an assessment against the affected parcel of land.

More information about the Napa County Weed Abatement Ordinance is at www.co.napa.ca.us/.

Additional information about defensible space and the county community chipping program is at www.co.napa.ca.us/ click on Napa Firewise under Quick Links.

Gabrielle Avina is the fire marshal for Napa County. She can be reached at gabrielle.avina@fire.ca.gov.