A homeowner on a steep hillside in Los Angeles cleared brush around his house in 2021, and the fire department sent a second notice anyway. His photographs, the hearing record says, showed clearance in the yard he uses and none on the outer lot. He believed the steep part did not count.
A city contractor cut it that October. The hearing officer waived the $1,498 administrative fee because he had tried, and left the $1,400 of clearing on the bill.
Clearing feels like a job you do to plants, one at a time: limb the trees, cut the dead wood out, tidy the ground you walk on. But the standard measures the distance between what you leave.
What actually happens
Section 4291 of the Public Resources Code sets the duty at 100 feet from each side of the structure, or to the property line. The operative verb is not trimmed: fuels shall be maintained and spaced, the section says, so that a wildfire would be unlikely to ignite the structure…