{"id":131517,"date":"2026-01-13T11:33:07","date_gmt":"2026-01-13T11:33:07","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/131517\/"},"modified":"2026-01-13T11:33:07","modified_gmt":"2026-01-13T11:33:07","slug":"los-angeles-debates-controversial-zone-zero-policy-in-the-wake-of-the-2025-wildfires","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/131517\/","title":{"rendered":"Los Angeles debates controversial &#8216;Zone Zero&#8217; policy in the wake of the 2025 wildfires"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>After the Eaton and Palisades fires destroyed thousands of homes in Los Angeles County, residents are debating whether a new state requirement to clear flammable material around homes \u2014 potentially including shrubs, plants and grass \u2014 is actually effective and worth the disruption to urban ecosystems.<\/p>\n<p>Studies looking at recent, destructive wildfires in California have found that removing flammable material within the first five feet of the home, dubbed \u201cZone Zero,\u201d provides a meaningful reduction in the risk of a wildfire destroying a home.<\/p>\n<p>However, some Los Angeles County residents and ecologists argue the research is preliminary and point to anecdotal evidence of healthy vegetation actually shielding homes from embers.<\/p>\n<p>The state\u2019s Board of Forestry and Fire Protection is currently debating whether to allow some healthy vegetation in the final form of the requirements, which won\u2019t take effect for existing homes until 2029 at the earliest and will only apply to areas with very high fire hazard.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"After the Eaton and Palisades fires destroyed thousands of homes in Los Angeles County, residents are debating whether&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":131518,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[27],"tags":[1581,67420,2641,4496,67421,1073,48,52,51,47,50,49,1839,5409,13803,225,3293,18848,3000,6527],"class_list":["post-131517","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-los-angeles","tag-board","tag-flammable-material","tag-foot","tag-forestry","tag-healthy-vegetation","tag-home","tag-la","tag-la-headlines","tag-la-news","tag-los-angeles","tag-los-angeles-headlines","tag-los-angeles-news","tag-palisades-fire","tag-policy","tag-shrub","tag-state","tag-thousand","tag-wake","tag-wildfire","tag-zone-zero"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/131517","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=131517"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/131517\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/131518"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=131517"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=131517"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=131517"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}