Berkeley Hills residents divided over regulation of no wooden structures within 5 feet of home

BERKELEY, Calif. (KGO) — Those white picket fences are most often associated with the American Dream. Add an old, hearty tree and life seems, well, complete.

But now the Berkeley Hills area is undergoing a transformation of sorts because of the potential threat of a wildfire starting in nearby Tilden Park.

“If there is a wildfire in the park and millions of small burning pieces of material fly and start landing on roof tops and next to homes here in Berkeley, how do we protect the homes so that the embers don’t ignite those homes? asked Berkeley Council member Brent Blackaby.

Blackaby says the answer is simple. Create a five-foot barrier around homes where nothing ignitable is allowed.

This, as expected, has ignited criticism.

“It’s personal, it’s my yard, demanded Jane Terjung, a Berkeley Hills resident.

When you venture around the Berkeley Hills, the word “lush” comes to mind and for some having to re-landscape around their home is unreasonable.

“You remove plants, what’s going in their place? You now have a problem. As you can see we’re up in the hills, it’s steep. There’s potential runoff problems when you remove plants, you lose the soil structure,” explained Richard Illgen, also a resident there.

Others have a different way of approaching it.

“Close to the house, we are planning on putting large stones that would keep the growth away from the home,” said resident Patrice Ignelzi.

In addition, she and her husband traded in their wooden fence for a metal one at a significant cost.

Under Berkeley’s new EMBER ordinance that went into effect on January 1, no wooden structures may touch or come within five feet of a home.

Almost immediately, contractors started to advertise.

The city of Berkeley is helping a few of those households and seniors pay for some of the landscaping costs.

Let’s take a closer look at what that five-foot barrier looks like. The councilmember showed us a tree next to his house which has been trimmed down.

“We need to do a little more refining. We started that process. This one too, again we’ve taken some of these branches out. We are directing the growth this way. We’ll do a little more pruning over here,” said Blackaby.

“Bushes against the deck, yeah, we have to remove those. We started removing some in the backyard so that one is gonna go,” he added.

For the past year, the fire department has started inspecting homes with the purpose of helping homeowners understand the ordinance.

“I think EMBER is a great idea because we need to do everything that we can to protect our homes in the whole area. To me, it doesn’t ruin our surrounding yards. It just sort of protection, a little bit of protection,” said Ignelzi.

Terjung says that’s debatable.

“There are studies on the other side, so to speak, because it’s turned into a fight, that shows that the moisture in plants often save a home, that some of them screen the embers,” claimed Terjung.

Let’s stop right there because a few months ago, UC Berkeley was part of a simulation that tested the vegetation during a wildfire.

Michael Gollner is one of the researchers.

“Unfortunately, the conditions are so extreme that the fire after a minute or two will dry out those plants and you get right at the same scenario, so any benefit is washed away before the fire would die down,” concluded Gollner who is the Director of the Berkeley Fire Research Lab.

His team also published a study that found that a 5-foot barrier can reduce the loss of a home by an added 17%.

But not every researcher agrees with the so-called benefits of that 5-foot perimeter.

RELATED: Berkeley votes to ban most plants, wooden fences within 5 feet from some homes to prevent wildfires

Travis Longcore of UCLA has studied the aftermath of larger Southern California fires.

“There is not currently in the literature strong evidence of post fire studies that show complete removal of plant within five fee is necessary or beneficial,” said Longcore of the UCLA Institute of the Environment and Sustainability.

Longcore believes this kind of removal has an adverse environmental impact.

Wildfires in these hills aren’t unheard of.

The last major fire in the Berkeley Hills was in 1991 which actually started in the Oakland Hills and quickly spread.

MORE: Oakland Hills Fire decades years later: Survivors’ stories captured in ABC7 documentary ‘Firestorm’

Before that, 640 homes were destroyed in 1923.

The state of California is finalizing its Zone Zero regulations. Those affected must be in compliance by 2029.

“Why wait for the state that has already take a long time when we are at risk while we wait? Second point is home insurers are canceling insurance of many of my constituents in this area every month. The longer we wait, the more people lose their insurance,” insisted Blackaby.

RELATED: Berkeley could soon ban plants, wooden fences 5 feet from homes to prevent wildfires

That’s true of Patrice Ignelzi and Bruce Smith. They lost their insurance coverage but eventually found another company at a higher cost.

Jane Terjung and is now covered through the California Fair Plan which is very expensive.

“Requires that everybody has to do it. If not everyone does it, then it’s really not going to help,” insisted Ignelzi. She and others now belong to a neighborhood group working with firefighters called Firewise.

Those who oppose the ordinance are threatening to recall their council member and fight to delay it from being enforced.