More than just goats

Mike Swanson

This year alone, 700 to 1,000 lots have been cleared either by

landowners or city workers as part of efforts to prevent a repeat of

the fire of 1993.

Efforts to limit fire danger in the city can be most generally

separated into two categories: weed abatement, which focuses on

build-able lots, and fuel modification on public property controlled

most frequently by the city’s goats.

The goats work year-round chewing away to create a defensible

perimeter around the city, Mike Macey, battalion chief with the

Laguna Beach Fire Department, told the City Council this week.

Macey was among a group of representatives from the Laguna Beach

Fire Department, the Orange County Fire Authority, the Nature Reserve

of Orange County and the Greater Laguna Coast Fire Safe Council who

presented an update about what is being done in Laguna Beach to

prevent a repeat of the fire of 1993.

Other efforts include such aggressive landscaping as in Jeff

Powers’ backyard.

Powers, a landscape designer who’s lived on Canyon Acres Drive

since 1975, said a garden designed to slow and cool a fire is a

resident’s best defense. Powers’ garden on the backyard hill above

his home went up 25 feet in 1993, and it now goes back 300 feet and

covers about an acre and a half.

Powers’ house burned in the 1993 fire, but his garden survived. He

had a redwood deck 10 years ago, which he said served as the wick

that took his house.

“Twenty-five feet was probably fine, but I kept modifying it and

modifying it until it was 300 feet up the hill,” Powers said. “Now

there’s no way a fire’s touching my house.”

Powers said his neighbor, firefighter Carl Klass, told him he’d

recommend not sending any firefighters to Powers’ house in the case

of a fire because he’s sure the vegetation would protect it.

The garden is a mixture of well-pruned, well-spaced native

vegetation and imported succulents, with a wall of sparsely spined

cactus separating his home from the garden.

“The goats are kind of a feel-good thing that don’t do much,”

Powers said. “People like them, but they create slide issues, and

what they eat turns into grass, which is worse than some of the

native plants in the area.”

The city began using the goats as a defense against fires in 1990,

the city clerk said.

“The best thing to do is attack your vegetation like a fire,

cutting out all the fuel that’s low to the ground every year and

trimming down the bushes every three years,” Powers said. “You don’t

have to eliminate anything, you just modify it and add some

succulents.”

Sal Navarro, the maintenance supervisor in charge of Betty

Everett’s Emerald Bay garden, said cactus is the best friend of any

resident whose home is bordering brush.

Everett’s garden isn’t nearly the size of Powers’ and functions

strictly as a defense against fire and predators, such as coyotes.

It’s filled with cactuses and myoporum, a thick Mediterranean plant

that only grows about an inch high, serving as grass that won’t burn.

Work on Everett’s garden began before the house had been rebuilt

after the 1993 fire, Navarro said, and he’s been working on it since,

maintaining the front and back of the 10,000-square-foot house’s

vegetation. The house borders Laguna Coast Wilderness Park.

Parks were on Councilman Wayne Baglin’s mind during the meeting.

Baglin suggested that the major parks in the area should be closed on

days with heavy Santa Ana winds because they offer so much potential

fuel for the urban parts of the city.

David Horne, head of the Greater Laguna Coast Fire Council and Red

Flag Patrol, agreed.

“There shouldn’t be anybody out there in those conditions who

might be smoking a cigarette after a bike ride,” Horne said.

Baglin also asked that the fire department provide the City

Council with a list of Laguna Beach’s most flammable vegetation so

the city can look into eliminating or trimming it.

Councilwoman Cheryl Kinsman added that she’d like to know how many

eucalyptus trees are in the process of being planted in the city.

More than one person, including Fire Chief Ken McLeod, said Tuesday

that eucalyptus trees are some of the most explosive subjects in a

fire.

Powers stressed that pruning your native plants, adding succulents

and limiting the amount of nonnative ornamental plants in your garden

are the best measures to keeping your house safe.

“You can do it on your own using these principles,” Powers said.

“Any owner of a house that abuts open space can’t afford not to.”

* MIKE SWANSON is a reporter for the Laguna Beach Coastline Pilot.

He covers education, public safety and City Hall. He can be reached

at (949) 494-4321 or [email protected].