In the over four decades the California Department of Forestry and Fire Protection has been mapping wildfire hazard, the Legislature has referenced, cross-referenced and cross-referenced their cross-references of the maps in over 100 fire-safety regulations across the state’s reams of statutory and regulatory codes — including highway safety, building requirements and insurance law.
This year, Cal Fire increased the zones by nearly 6 million acres — representing about 6% of the state. The update added 2.8 million more Californians into the “moderate,” “high” and “very high” hazard zones, throwing them into the often head-spinning world of hazard zone fire safety regulations.
The Times mapped the new areas and analyzed every reference to the zones in California’s codes and building standards. Here’s your crash course on Cal Fire’s hazard zones and what they mean for communities and residents across the state.
The zones
Cal Fire groups its complex hazard assessments into three simple Fire Hazard Severity Zones: “moderate” hazard zones marked in yellow, “high” zones in orange and “very high” zones in red. It does this for state responsibility areas, where Cal Fire is responsible for responding to fires, and the local responsibility areas, where that job falls on city and county fire departments.
You can use the map below to find whether your home lies in one of these zones, as well as details about the fire safety regulations that apply and the general fire risk (which accounts for more than the fire hazard) in your ZIP Code.
Cal Fire completed its two-month rollout of new maps for the local responsibility areas in March. Now, local governments have 120 days to receive public input and adopt the maps with an ordinance. While cities and counties can opt to increase the hazard level of a zone or number of acres in a zone, they cannot decrease them. Ordinances typically take effect about 30 days after adopted.
When all is said and done, the zones will encompass the homes of at least 7.2 million Californians and cover over 37% of the state’s land.
Cal Fire considers wildfire hazard the chance of an area experiencing devastating wildfire. It’s a combination of the probability of an area experiencing a fire and that fire’s potential intensity.
The maps do not reflect fire risk: the chance of a fire destroying or severely damaging a property. Fire risk uses hazard as a starting point and takes into account the protection measures, such as home hardening and maintaining defensible space, that communities and property owners have taken.
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While Cal Fire aims to create an accurate picture of fire hazard in the state, its model has some notable limitations.
The agency models fire in the wildlands based on factors including vegetation type, topology, climate and potential extreme weather. However, it does not model fire in urban areas. Instead, it estimates how far a wildland fire could spill over into developed cities and towns.
This means Cal Fire’s models cannot account for the potential of high-intensity urban blazes that rip through city blocks, like the Eaton fire and the 2017 Tubbs fire in Santa Rosa.
Cal Fire also stresses that its maps are designed to determine where fire safety regulations should apply, not provide a comprehensive picture of fire hazard in the state or serve as the de facto tool Californians use to assess their fire risk.
The agency also does not model fire hazard for areas where the federal government is responsible for firefighting, such as within national parks and Bureau of Land Management land.
Californians can gain a more comprehensive understanding of their risk and hazard by exploring a wider range of fire models and maps, including those from the U.S. Department of Agriculture, the California Department of Insurance and the disaster-modeling public-benefit company First Street.
Cal Fire is required by law to update the maps roughly every five years.
Fire safety regulations
Cal Fire’s hazard maps are referenced in over 50 sections of the California Codes, the laws passed by the state Legislature, and dozens of sections in the California Code of Regulations, which state agencies write. They span the state’s building codes, government codes, insurance codes, street and highway codes and public safety codes.
Many simply tell the government how to do its job — like the codes that instruct Cal Fire to make the maps in the first place — but others directly apply to property owners, residents and local governments. Most notably, they require home hardening and defensible space management for residents, and they place evacuation, firefighting water supplies and residential development requirements on local governments.
“What we’re trying to tell people is … if you’re going to build a house here, these are the things you need to do to build that house safely for the next 50 years,” said Frank Bigelow, Cal Fire’s deputy director of community wildfire preparedness and mitigation. “These measures are the best available … to keep those homes safe for that long period of time.”
The requirements for each hazard level can differ significantly, depending on whether property owners live in state or local responsibility areas. Local governments, such as L.A. city or county, can — and often do — adopt more stringent regulations than what the state requires.
Cal Fire and state law require homeowners in applicable hazard zones to maintain three regions of defensible space: “Zone 0” extends 5 feet out from a structure, “Zone 1” extends 30 feet out and “Zone 2” 100 feet out — or to the edge of the property, whichever is closer.
With requirements already in place for Zones 1 and 2, a 2020 law required Cal Fire to create regulations for Zone 0 by the start of 2023. That never happened.
After the January L.A. County wildfires, Gov. Gavin Newsom signed an executive order mandating the agency finalize the Zone 0 regulations by the end of 2025. (In the same executive order, he mandated the release of the new fire hazard maps that Cal Fire rolled out in February and March.)
In the meantime, Cal Fire has provided nonbinding guidance for Zone 0 that is based on the draft regulations. Once the regulations are on the books, property owners with existing homes will have three years to comply.
Local governments have the authority to assess whether property owners are complying with the requirements. The L.A. city and county fire departments conduct defensible space inspections annually, typically in the spring. The city and county charge violators an inspection fee and give them 20 and 30 days, respectively, to make a correction.
Homeowners must also receive documentation of their compliance when selling their property.
A failure to comply results in a fine of $100 to $500. On a third offense within five years, the fine increases to at least $500 and the property owner is charged with a “public nuisance” misdemeanor. In extreme instances, local governments can take matters into their own hands and do the vegetation management work themselves at the property owner’s expense.
Cal Fire lists the full, detailed defensible space requirements and guidance on its website.
Property owners in a new hazard zone with heightened wildfire building codes must comply in order to receive a building permit to construct a new building, add an addition, remodel or rebuild a destroyed property.
Both L.A. city and county are offering to expedite approval of homes destroyed in the Palisades and Eaton fires, including by allowing homeowners to rebuild the same structure even if it no longer complies with current zoning requirements.
However, both the city and county will still require properties in the older “very high” hazard zones to comply with the wildfire building codes adopted in 2008.
The full requirements are outlined in California’s R337 residential building codes for exterior wildfire exposure.
The regulations tied to Cal Fire’s hazard zones also include a slew of requirements for local governments, designed to reduce communities’ wildfire risk and keep residents safe should disaster strike.
Many laws that streamline the construction of new housing — by limiting local governments’ ability to reject development proposals and exempting proposals from the CEQA environmental review process — do not apply in higher hazard areas. However, both Newsom and Mayor Karen Bass signed executive orders exempting many rebuilds in the Eaton and Palisades burn areas from CEQA requirements.
A 2024 law will require both public and charter schools with more than 50 students in “high” and “very high” hazard zones to create evacuation plans starting in the 2026-2027 school year. This includes identifying a refuge shelter, should fire officials order evacuation, and communicating plans with the local authorities.
In state responsibility areas and in “very high” local responsibility areas, local governments are required to consider fire hazard in city planning — including by locating essential public facilities such as hospitals and emergency command centers outside of high-hazard areas “when feasible” — and they must demonstrate to Cal Fire that they meet all fire-safety requirements and have firefighting services to keep the community safe.
In these zones, Cal Fire consults with local governments in the city planning process and has the authority to create and enforce “minimum fire safe regulations” for cities, which include rules ensuring roads are wide and safe enough for fire trucks, that communities have enough fuel breaks to slow fires and that there are enough water supplies to effectively fight fires.
The minimum fire safe regulations are “all the things that lead up to the house,” said Bigelow. “If somebody’s building a new house somewhere, you would hate for them to build a home where you couldn’t drive a fire engine down the driveway.”
Hazard versus risk
Cal Fire is adamant that its hazard maps do not influence fire insurance rates nor policy renewals in the state — and for a good reason: While Cal Fire models hazard, insurance companies are interested in risk, the actual chance of a fire damaging or destroying a home. Insurance companies have their own complex and sophisticated “catastrophe” models that are distinct from Cal Fire’s hazard model.
For years, insurance companies have used these wildfire catastrophe models to set rates and determine who gets or doesn’t get coverage. Last year, a Times analysis found that nonrenewals were focused in areas with higher wildfire risk.
Essentially, Cal Fire’s maps don’t tell insurers anything they didn’t already know.
Homeowners with such high fire risk that no insurance company is willing to cover them can buy into the state-mandated FAIR plan. Nearly 450,000 Californians or 6% of the state’s homeowners rely on the bare-bones insurer of last resort. The insurance companies in the state pool their money to pay out claims.
The state has issued a one-year moratorium on insurance companies canceling or non-renewing residential insurance policies near several fire areas, including the Eaton and Palisades burn areas.
The Cal Fire maps do little to exacerbate the insurance crisis. In fact, only one regulation that is tied to the hazard zones mentions insurance.
Insurance code 10094.2: Insurance companies that offer to cover residents in “high” and “very high” hazard zones are rewarded by having to pay less into the FAIR plan.
