Zone 0 is coming. Laguna Beach should stop arguing about mulch and get shovels.

This is a column, and the view in it is the author's. But the facts underneath are not in dispute, and Laguna Beach should read them twice: 87 percent of this city's land sits in a very high fire hazard severity zone, about 65 percent of our buildable property is inside it, and the state's Zone 0 defensible space rules are on the way. At a city briefing, the fire chief said it plainly. The new standard will mean hardscape only in the first five feet of a home. No wood chips. No exceptions for how nice it looked.

Somewhere in this town, someone is rehearsing an argument about how the rule ruins their landscaping. I have sympathy, and I have a counter: the insurance industry has already rendered its verdict. At that same briefing, a state insurance representative said companies are returning to California only where they see mitigation, and they evaluate risk at the area level, not house by house. Your neighbor's mulch pile is your underwriting. A Palisades survivor told the room her house stood because of exterior sprinklers, and her insurer still priced the whole neighborhood, not her heroics. This is the game. We can play it or be played by it.

An aerial view of Laguna Beach, where hillside homes meet open chaparral on every side.

formulanone, CC BY-SA 2.0, via Wikimedia Commons · Source

So here is the position: Laguna Beach should stop treating Zone 0 as a regulation to be endured and start treating it as the cheapest insurance policy this town will ever be offered. Clearing the first five feet of a house costs a weekend and a dump run. Compare that to the alternative, which is whatever your premium becomes when the next assessor looks at your street. The city's own 2026 Community Wildfire Protection Plan says the Fire Department's brush clearance inspection sweep begins every May 1, so the calendar is already set. The department offers free wildfire consultations to any property owner. Those two facts are a program waiting to happen.

What the city should do, in this columnist's view, is three things. First, expand the free consultation program and take it door to door in the canyon neighborhoods instead of waiting for requests, with priority for seniors and residents who cannot clear their own lots. Second, keep chasing the Cal OES and Cal Fire grant money that officials mentioned at the briefing and point it at private property work, not just city fuel breaks. Third, fold Zone 0 compliance into the real estate conversation so buyers know the five-foot rule before escrow, not after the first red flag warning.

Homes perch on the bluffs of North Laguna, where ember-cast risk runs straight to the sea.

Don Ramey Logan, CC BY 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons · Source

The goats are already doing their part on the fuel breaks above town. The least the rest of us can do is the five feet around our own front doors. Zone 0 is not the city against the homeowner. It is the homeowner against the ember, and the ember does not negotiate.