California to Miss Fire Home-Protection Rules Deadline Again

A California state agency won’t meet Governor Gavin Newsom’s year-end deadline to finish long-delayed regulations to protect homes from wildfires, rules that experts say could have limited the destruction of the January Los Angeles firestorms.

At a meeting of the California Board of Forestry and Fire Protection on Monday, chair Terrence O’Brien said officials would wait until March 2026 to continue work on regulations to require ember-resistant zones, called Zone Zero, around some 2 million houses in high-risk wildfire areas. That means it could be mid-2029 or later before any mandate takes effect for existing homes.

O’Brien cited continued ...