Register
Every California jurisdiction we can prove has a Zone 0 rule in force
The short version
The statewide Zone 0 regulation was adopted on August 19, 2026 and is not yet in effect. Twelve local jurisdictions are not waiting: they already require an ember-resistant zone in the first five feet, on their own timetables, with their own scopes. We verified each one from the jurisdiction's own adopted text. There is no official state list of these, which is why we keep one. It is almost certainly incomplete, and we say so below rather than pretending otherwise.
Why a register instead of a number
We started this site saying four jurisdictions had Zone 0 rules in force. County research took it to six, then seven, and a single day of proper survey work took it to twelve. Nothing changed in California during that day. What changed is how carefully we looked.
That is worth being honest about, because it tells you something real: nobody maintains a list of these. Not the Board of Forestry, not the Office of the State Fire Marshal, not any county. Ember-resistant zone rules are being adopted one fire district and one city council at a time, and they are not being counted anywhere. So we are not going to give you a confident number. We are going to give you the ones we can prove, name what we checked, and add to it.
If your jurisdiction is not here, that does not mean it has no rule. It means we have not verified one. We have surveyed sixteen of California's fifty-eight counties, and every one of them is published below or linked from this table.
The twelve we can prove
Each row was read from the jurisdiction's own ordinance, code section or adopted standard, not from a summary. Scope matters more than the entry itself: several of these bind only new construction, and one of the best known imposes no fence requirement at all.
| Jurisdiction | County | In force | What it reaches | Fence rule? |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Ventura County Fire Protection District | Ventura | New buildings from April 2019; full noncombustible zone from March 1, 2025 | Most of the county outside three cities | Yes |
| Unincorporated Napa County | Napa | May 2021 | New construction only | No |
| City of Laguna Beach | Orange | November 5, 2021 | Existing structures in the Very High zone | Yes |
| Moraga-Orinda Fire District | Contra Costa | March 17, 2023 | All structures, new and existing | No. Ground cover reaches two feet, not five |
| City of Nevada City | Nevada | 2023, Ordinance 2023-03 | Citywide | No |
| Unincorporated Nevada County | Nevada | Nevada County Code §4.01.040(C)(10) | All unincorporated territory | No |
| Woodside Fire Protection District | San Mateo | Adopted April 30, 2024, effective 30 days later | District-wide | Yes, at six feet, and only for new fences |
| City of Auburn | Placer | July 10, 2024 | New construction only; expressly voluntary for existing buildings | Yes |
| City of Grass Valley | Nevada | Ordinance 832, adopted December 10, 2024 | Citywide | No |
| City of Berkeley | Alameda | January 1, 2026 | Two named mitigation areas, just under 1,400 properties. Not citywide | Yes |
| City of San Diego | San Diego | February 28, 2026; existing-home deadlines from February 2027 | Very High zone inside city limits | Yes |
| Montecito Fire Protection District | Santa Barbara | Development Standard #2, November 2025 | New buildings and additions, not untouched existing homes | Yes |
The three things this table is for
- Check the scope column before you spend anything. Half of these reach only new construction or additions. If you own an existing house in Auburn, Napa or Montecito, the local rule very likely does not require you to change your fence today.
- Do not assume a Zone 0 rule is a fence rule. Five of the twelve say nothing about fences at all. Moraga-Orinda has the earliest ember-resistant zone in California and its only fence provision bans bark and wood-chip fencing within 100 feet, which is a different thing entirely.
- Check the distance. Every rule here is five feet except Woodside's, which is written at six. A reader who "knows the five-foot rule" gets Woodside wrong.
One email when something actually changes
The Zone Zero Brief: Board actions, local deadlines, insurance filings: dated, sourced, no filler. The next issue goes out when the OAL review produces news.
What we have not checked
We have surveyed sixteen counties: Alameda, Contra Costa, El Dorado, Los Angeles, Marin, Napa, Nevada, Orange, Placer, Riverside, San Bernardino, San Diego, San Mateo, Santa Barbara, Sonoma and Ventura. That leaves forty-two we have not looked at properly, and California has hundreds of fire protection districts with independent ordinance authority.
We are also carrying open questions inside the counties we have surveyed. Where a district's ordinance is an image scan with no text layer, or a city code is behind a portal we cannot read, we record that as unverified rather than guessing. Those are listed on each county page under "claims we could not verify", and there is a standing list of what we still do not know about the statewide rule.
Don't see your county? Tell us which one
We add a county when we have something verified to say about it, which usually means a local rule, a grant that names fence work, or a map change. Tell us where you are and we will email you when we publish it. If we look and find nothing is happening where you live, we will tell you that too, because it is worth knowing and it costs you nothing to act on.
Frequently asked questions
Is there an official list of these?
No. That is the point of this page. Ember-resistant zone rules are adopted by individual fire districts and city councils, and no state body compiles them. If one is published we will link to it and say so.
Why did your number keep changing?
Because we kept looking harder. Four, then six, then seven, then twelve, with nothing changing in California in between. We publish the number we can prove rather than the number we would like, and we would rather tell you the survey is incomplete than imply it is finished.
My jurisdiction has a rule and it is not listed. What now?
Send it to us with a link to the ordinance or code section. We will read the adopted text, verify it, and add it with the date. We do not add jurisdictions on the strength of a news story or a district's summary page.
Does the statewide rule replace these?
Not exactly. Once the statewide regulation takes effect it sets a floor, and local agencies may be more restrictive. Until then it sets nothing, because it has no effective date. The local rules in this table are the only Zone 0 requirements binding anyone in California today.