March 2, 2005 Fuel Modification Plan

Editorial Rating:

Reader Rating: ( 0 votes)

Following the L.A. fire season of 1993, all new construction projects located in Fire Zone 4 and “Very High Fire Hazard Severity Zones” are required to submit a Fuel Modification Plan to the Forestry Division. It is a very detailed report that requires the developer (us) to map and identify all of the vegetation on the property and then submit a landscape proposal. I had no idea that there was any need for a report until our neighbor, who is building across the street from us, asked if we submitted one. It wasn’t on our agency checklist that the plan checker gave us. In fact, if it weren’t for our neighbor mentioning it, we would have never known it was required until Building and Safety realized it was missing.

A few days later, I went to the fire department desk located in the Building and Safety office and asked them about the procedure for submitting a Fuel Modification Plan and was told that I had to go online and access the text of the guidelines. The girl at the counter was very vague, so I thought I would read the guidelines online and then call if I had questions. Our neighbor mentioned that they needed a couple of photos and a map of all the existing vegetation and I thought it wouldn’t be such a big deal. After I read the fuel modification guidelines, I quickly realized that this would be a lot of work based on the size and intended use of our property. When developing, most people remove all plants from the property, max out the building pad area and then plunk sod on whatever is remaining on the lot. We plan to landscape with native plants so submitting our fuel modification plan required a lot of research and time to prepare. I called up the fuel modification department to verify what I needed to include before I started.

I have many reasons for insisting on native plants; quite honestly, I am a terrible gardener. My failure as a gardener influenced me because I haven’t the expertise to nurse plants that can’t survive here with hot summers and little rain. The other big motivator for me is my hobby, bird watching. I wanted a yard that attracted birds without the use of artificial feeding. If you’ve ever fed birds, you know that it is necessary to disinfect feeders and baths and that it is a hassle when you do it. I became interested in native plants after I read this article published by the Audubon Society. I also began to realize that plants can become endangered species too and one of the best ways to keep them in the environment is to plant them in your backyard.

We don’t have the budget to hire a landscape architect to design a plan, so it was necessary for me to do it. The Fuel Modification Plan that we submitted stays in our file for the fire department when they do their yearly brush clearance checks and therefore it is important that it is done correctly. Before I started this I knew very little about plants native to my area. After much research, I am very pleased with how the design turned out and proud of myself for learning so much in such a short amount of time. Here is how I organized the landscape design and the fuel modification plan:

Researching

This definitely took the most time. Truthfully, I started learning a little about my local natives three months ago. I only became serious about it when I started the Fuel Modification Plan. A few months ago I took a trip to Theodore Payne Nonprofit Nursery and purchased a couple of books about Southern California natives. I spent some time reading them and became more interested in identifying plants that I saw everyday. In addition to these books, I met with a native landscape consultant from the National Wildlife Federation’s Backyard Wildlife Habitat Program. He gave us some good ideas and I started to formulate a rough landscape plan.

Most of my research was done online at the Las Pilitas Nursery site. They have a site that is chockfull of plant information. I also visited the Cal State Berkeley database of native plants as well as the Matalija Nursery site. Through these resources, I became more fluent with the plants that I would be using. Our location is a mixture of southern oak woodland and chaparral terrain and it was a little tricky to ascertain the plants that are likely to live in Val Verde, and more specifically, on our site.

The second part of the research was identifying what we already had on the property. The consultant from the National Wildlife Federation helped us identify some of the trees on the property and because some of the trees weren’t native, I turned to Sunset’s Western Garden Guide to identify the rest. One of the requirements of the Fuel Modification Plan is inclusion of an existing vegetation map of the property. I spent one Saturday mapping all the trees and shrubbery while David was at a gig. I felt that David would do a better job of mapping but I did it anyway because it needed to be done right away and there was no other time to do it. When I was done, I entered the information into a CAD program.

Compiling and Zone Delineation

The first thing that I did in drafting our plan was to delineate fire zones for our property. From the guidelines, I determined that we would have two zones: Zone A & Zone B. Zone A is an area of at least 20 feet from the perimeter of a combustible structure. In our case, this was only our house since our carport is detached and made of steel. Only a few highly-fire resistant and water loving plants are allowed in this zone. Zone B is also an irrigated zone. Vegetation in this zone is limited to plants that are approved for this zone.

In the Fuel Modification Guidelines, there is an appendix of a “desirable plant species list” and which zones they are to be placed in. I isolated all the natives in the approved list and cross-referenced them with according to zone placement. From here it was easy to create the plan. In the below picture, you can see the zone A outline surrounding the house with a dotted line.

All of our existing Silver Dollar Eucalyptuses will have to be removed because they are a "target species" and they're currently located in Zone A. Eucalyptus are highly flammable...

Designing/Drafting

The zone delineation was a great starting point for the design. I put together a binder full of photos of our native plants and their individual requirements, drew in the deck and some bubbles and this is what I came up with.

Click here for a larger image of the plan.

I considered the issue of window placement/views in the landscaping as well as the visual aspect of the plants and their respective requirements. This area is host to many native berries, a cherry tree, walnuts and grapes which all attract birds and are also suitable for human consumption.

I think it was important that I had so many constraints; fire zones, use of natives etc. It narrowed down my choices and once I had the basic shape and flow, it took only two days until the plan was complete.

Other items included

I also needed to include an irrigation plan with the landscape design. This was very simple to create with a large piece of tracing paper over the landscape plan.