VHFHSZ and SRA: two maps, two obligations
Government Code 51177(i) defines a very high fire hazard severity zone as one the State Fire Marshal designates outside a state responsibility area, so the two cannot overlap. Inside the area the rating comes from 19 CCR 2201; outside it from a local ordinance under Government Code 51179. Neither sets a conductor clearance.
Two 12 kV spans, both over brush, both rated Very High. On the first, that rating is a list of street segments written into a city ordinance the Berkeley City Council passed to print on April 15, 2025. On the second it comes from a map dated September 29, 2023, held at 715 P Street in Sacramento, that a regulation made operative on April 1, 2024.
The two documents are not editions of each other, and by statute the second zone cannot reach ground the first one covers. The clearance owed on both spans is the same number, set by a rule that names neither map.
Almost all of the confusion here is one phrase doing two jobs. "Very high fire hazard severity zone" is a defined term in two separate codes, assigned by the same officer, adopted by two different instruments, on two clocks that have never been synchronized. The State Responsibility Area is a third thing again, and what it decides is which of the two zone schemes a given acre falls under.
The two maps answer different questions
Public Resources Code 4201, added by Stats. 1982, Ch. 806, states the purpose of the zone article:
The purpose of this article is to provide for the classification of lands within state responsibility areas in accordance with the severity of fire hazard present for the purpose of identifying measures to be taken to retard the rate of spreading and to reduce the potential intensity of uncontrolled fires that threaten to destroy resources, life, or property.
Rate of spread and intensity. A Fire Hazard Severity Zone is a statement about how a fire will behave on that ground. The State Responsibility Area is a statement about who carries financial responsibility for fighting it, which PRC 4125 puts with the Board of Forestry and Fire Protection.
The factors come in the next section. PRC 4202:
The State Fire Marshal shall classify lands within state responsibility areas into fire hazard severity zones. Each zone shall embrace relatively homogeneous lands and shall be based on fuel loading, slope, fire weather, and other relevant factors present, including areas where winds have been identified by the department as a major cause of wildfire spread.
Government Code 51178 reaches the land outside the area with the same four factors:
The State Fire Marshal shall identify areas in the state as moderate, high, and very high fire hazard severity zones based on consistent statewide criteria and based on the severity of fire hazard that is expected to prevail in those areas. Moderate, high, and very high fire hazard severity zones shall be based on fuel loading, slope, fire weather, and other relevant factors including areas where winds have been identified by the Office of the State Fire Marshal as a major cause of wildfire spread.
Fuel loading, slope, fire weather, wind. The inputs are properties of the landscape, and a conductor is not among them. There is one live difference between the two sentences: PRC 4202 credits the wind identification to "the department," and Government Code 51178 credits it to "the Office of the State Fire Marshal." Both are current law.
The definition that keeps the two zones apart
Government Code 51177 is the definitions section for the chapter running from 51175 to 51189. Subdivision (i) is the one to read twice:
"Very high fire hazard severity zone" means an area designated as a very high fire hazard severity zone by the State Fire Marshal pursuant to Section 51178 that is not a state responsibility area.
The last eight words carry the whole structure. Inside that chapter, a very high fire hazard severity zone sits outside the State Responsibility Area as a matter of definition. Very High also exists inside the area, assigned under PRC 4202 by an entirely different instrument. A parcel in the State Responsibility Area rated Very High therefore falls outside the term as Government Code 51177 uses it, and every duty written against that definition passes it by.
Inside a State Responsibility Area | Outside one | |
Authority | PRC 4201 through 4204 | Gov. Code 51178 and 51179 |
Who assigns the rating | the State Fire Marshal | the State Fire Marshal, as a recommendation |
Who adopts it | the State Fire Marshal, by regulation | the local agency, by ordinance |
The instrument to cite | 19 CCR 2201 | a city or county ordinance |
Ratings in use | Moderate, High, Very High | Moderate, High, Very High |
Step before adoption | 45 day transmittal and a county hearing, PRC 4203(b) | 30 day public review, Gov. Code 51178.5 |
Local room to move | petition to revise, Gov. Code 11340.6 | raise the rating, Gov. Code 51179(b) |
Inside the area, the rating is a regulation
PRC 4203 sets the route and the wait:
(a) The State Fire Marshal shall, by regulation, designate fire hazard severity zones and assign to each zone a rating reflecting the degree of severity of fire hazard that is expected to prevail in the zone. (b) No designation of a zone and assignment of a rating shall be adopted by the State Fire Marshal until the proposed regulation has been transmitted to the board of supervisors of the county in which the zone is located at least 45 days before the adoption of the proposed regulation and a public hearing has been held in that county during that 45-day period.
Every acre of Very High inside the State Responsibility Area has a transmittal to a county board of supervisors behind it and a public hearing held in that county, and both of those have dates a records request can reach. The regulation that process produced is 19 CCR 2201, titled Fire Hazard Severity Zones in the SRA:
The fire hazard severity zones and the rating reflecting the degree of severity of fire hazard that is expected to prevail in those zones, shall be designated by the State Fire Marshal and delineated on a map on file in the Sacramento Office of the Department of Forestry and Fire Protection, Office of the State Fire Marshal, Fire and Resources Assessment Program, 715 P Street.
The map it incorporates by reference is "State Responsibility Area Fire Hazard Severity Zones," dated September 29, 2023, and the section cites PRC 4202, 4203 and 4204 as its authority. Los Angeles County's own public GIS layer for the zones records the same chain in one line.
Fire Hazard Severity Zone classes (FHSZ_23_3) from the map dated September 29, 2023, as adopted on January 31, 2024 and implemented on April 1, 2024.
The citation itself moved twice in four years, so a file that names the old one points at a section that no longer carries a map. Former 14 CCR 1280 became 14 CCR 1280.01 on a filing of February 19, 2020, operative April 1, 2020. Section 1280.01 was then renumbered and amended into Title 19 as section 2201, filed January 31, 2024, operative April 1, 2024, at Register 2024, No. 5. Title 19 is the State Fire Marshal's title, which is where the duty went.
PRC 4204 governs what happens next:
The State Fire Marshal shall periodically review zones designated and rated pursuant to this article and, as necessary, shall revise zones or their ratings or repeal the designation of zones. Any revision of a zone or its rating or any repeal of a zone shall conform to the requirements of Section 4203. In addition, the revision or repeal of a zone may be petitioned pursuant to Sections 11340.6 and 11340.7 of the Government Code.
"Periodically" carries no interval, and the section supplies none. The State Fire Marshal decides when a review happens, and the only fixed dates a program can cite are the ones on the current map: September 29, 2023 for the map, April 1, 2024 for its operative date. The last sentence opens a second route. Any person may petition to revise or repeal a zone under the Administrative Procedure Act, and that route exists on this side of the responsibility line only.
Outside it, the rating is an ordinance
Three steps, each with a clock on it. The State Fire Marshal identifies the zones under Government Code 51178 and transmits them. Then Government Code 51178.5:
Within 30 days after receiving a transmittal from the State Fire Marshal that identifies fire hazard severity zones pursuant to Section 51178, a local agency shall make the information available for public review and comment. The information shall be presented in a format that is understandable and accessible to the general public, including, but not limited to, maps.
Then Government Code 51179(a):
A local agency shall designate, by ordinance, moderate, high, and very high fire hazard severity zones in its jurisdiction within 120 days of receiving recommendations from the State Fire Marshal pursuant to Section 51178.
The local agency has room to move in exactly one direction, and subdivision (b)(3) states it twice, once as a prohibition and once as a limit:
A local agency shall not decrease the level of fire hazard severity zone as identified by the State Fire Marshal for any area within the jurisdiction of the local agency, and, in exercising its discretion pursuant to paragraph (2), may only increase the level of fire hazard severity zone as identified by the State Fire Marshal for any area within the jurisdiction of the local agency.
Subdivision (b)(1) lets the agency add a Very High area the State Fire Marshal never identified, on "a finding supported by substantial evidence in the record that the requirements of Section 51182 are necessary for effective fire protection within the area." Subdivision (d) then closes the question: "Changes made by a local agency to the recommendations made by the State Fire Marshal shall be final and shall not be rebuttable by the State Fire Marshal."
The adopted ordinance goes to the State Board of Forestry and Fire Protection within 30 days under subdivision (c). The release dates of the 2025 Local Responsibility Area recommendations, which started those 120 day clocks, are set out on the responsibility area page.
Berkeley's Ordinance No. 7,958-N.S. shows what subdivision (b) produces. Section 2 adopts the recommended zones. Section 3 adds more, and the added boundary is written as streets:
Designate as Very High Fire Hazard Severity Zones those areas of the City bounded by the line formed by these roads. Homes addressed on, or with a structural frontage on either side of these road segments are included in the zone: a. Canyon Road from the Oakland border to Stadium Rim Way ... h. Dwight Way from Piedmont Avenue to the Oakland border
A span over the stretch of Dwight Way between Piedmont Avenue and the Oakland border sits in a Very High zone because nine council members voted for it at a special meeting on April 15, 2025. The reasons the ordinance gives for that area are about buildings and egress.
narrow structure separation distance and high housing density, limited retrofitting of structures to bring them in compliance with Chapter 7A of the Building Standards Code, a single evacuation route that will cause extended evacuation time
A vegetation program reading that boundary as a fuel signal is reading something the record does not claim.
The same findings record what SB 63 changed, which matters to anyone comparing a file against an older map.
when the current maps were released in 2007 the High and Moderate designations did not apply to the Local Responsibility Area and only Very High area were designated by the City Council
A 2007 Local Responsibility Area map carries one class. A 2025 one carries three. An entry reading "outside the mapped zone" against the older map answers a question that map was never able to ask.
A recommendation is not a designation
Government Code 51182(a) names its own trigger, and the trigger is the ordinance:
Pursuant to these regulations, a person who owns, leases, controls, operates, or maintains an occupied dwelling or occupied structure within a very high fire hazard severity zone designated by the local agency pursuant to Section 51179, shall at all times do all of the following:
So while a jurisdiction is still working through its 120 days, the zone that 51182 points at there is the one its earlier ordinance designated. Government Code 51179 sets the 120 days and names no consequence for missing them.
That gap is real, the chapter does not resolve it, and the people who resolve it in practice are the local agency's counsel and, on a contested parcel, a court. For a corridor program the practical effect is narrow. The recommendation records what the rating is about to become, and the ordinance records what it is.
The State Fire Marshal took over in 2022
Sections | Amended by | Effective |
PRC 4202, 4203, 4204 | AB 9, Stats. 2021, Ch. 225 | January 1, 2022 |
Gov. Code 51177, 51178, 51178.5 | SB 63, Stats. 2021, Ch. 382 | January 1, 2022 |
Gov. Code 51179 | AB 211, Stats. 2022, Ch. 574 | September 27, 2022 |
PRC 4291 and Gov. Code 51182 | AB 1455, Stats. 2025, Ch. 731 | October 13, 2025 |
Two live statutes now name the State Fire Marshal for the same act. Older text around them still credits it elsewhere, which is why two current sources can name different officers for the same map. The natural hazard disclosure statement printed in Civil Code 1103.2 carries this line:
A HIGH or VERY HIGH FIRE HAZARD SEVERITY ZONE (FHSZ) as identified by the Director of Forestry and Fire Protection pursuant to Section 51178 of the Government Code or Article 9 (commencing with Section 4201) of Chapter 1 of Part 2 of Division 4 of the Public Resources Code.
One checkbox, both codes, and an officer that neither code now names. The same form asks about the responsibility area on a separate line: "A WILDLAND AREA THAT MAY CONTAIN SUBSTANTIAL FOREST FIRE RISKS AND HAZARDS pursuant to Section 4125 of the Public Resources Code." Two boxes, one for the hazard rating and one for the responsibility area, on a form a buyer signs.
Neither map sets a clearance
PRC 4293 opens on the ground cover and on a determination:
Except as otherwise provided in Sections 4294 to 4296, inclusive, any person that owns, controls, operates, or maintains any electrical transmission or distribution line upon any mountainous land, or in forest-covered land, brush-covered land, or grass-covered land shall, during such times and in such areas as are determined to be necessary by the director or the agency which has primary responsibility for the fire protection of such areas, maintain a clearance of the respective distances which are specified in this section in all directions between all vegetation and all conductors which are carrying electric current
Two things switch that duty on: the cover on the ground, and a determination of times and areas by the Director or by the agency with primary fire protection responsibility there. PRC 4292 opens with the same clause for the pole firebreak. The clearance distances and the firebreak geometry have their own pages, and a rating appears in neither.
General Order 95 selects on a third geography entirely. In the January 2020 edition the word "severity" appears zero times and "High Fire-Threat District" appears 14. "State Responsibility Area" appears once in the whole order.
It sits in the Appendix E guidelines to Rule 35, among the factors a utility may weigh at time of trim, as "vegetation trimming requirements that are applicable to State Responsibility Area lands pursuant to Public Resource Code Sections 4102 and 4293." Which case of Table 1 a span owes turns on the High Fire-Threat District, a CPUC product drawn for CPUC rules.
What the rating does carry
Designation | The duty it switches on | Source |
A building or structure in a State Responsibility Area | the defensible space duties, at any rating | PRC 4291(a) |
An occupied dwelling in a locally designated very high zone | the same duties, through Board of Forestry regulations | Gov. Code 51182(a) |
High or Very High under either code | a line on the natural hazard disclosure statement | Civil Code 1103.2 |
Very High or High in Berkeley | Chapter 7A construction on new work and major remodels | Ordinance 7,958-N.S. |
PRC 4291(a) puts the first row on the area alone:
A person who owns, leases, controls, operates, or maintains a building or structure in the state responsibility area shall at all times do all of the following:
The geometry of that split is worth holding onto. Inside the State Responsibility Area the parcel duty attaches to the area itself and the rating stays out of the test. Outside it the duty attaches to the rating, and the area is what puts the parcel under that chapter to begin with. Berkeley states the consequence for its own residents in plain terms: owners in Very High zones are "required to maintain defensible space within 100 feet of structures, or the property line, whichever is closer."
Every row there is owed by whoever owns the ground. Defensible space and construction standards run against a parcel file, on a different inspection, by a different agency. The rating reaches the owner of the land and stops there.
What changes at the city limit
A 12 kV circuit runs four spans over unincorporated county brush and crosses into a city between pole 3 and pole 4. Three files change across that crossing and one number holds.
The clearance duty stays on. PRC 4292 and 4293 bind on land cover, and the brush is the same brush. What changes is who makes the determination of times and areas, and the statute names the alternative itself: the agency with primary responsibility for fire protection there.
The Title 14 relief stops. 14 CCR 1257 writes its exemptions against "the minimum clearance provisions of PRC 4293 applicable in State Responsibility Areas," so tree wire, aerial cable and a confirmed Exempt Tree stop answering for the span past pole 3. Which obligations follow the land across that line is worked through on its own page.
The zone citation changes. The Very High rating that came from 19 CCR 2201 on the county side comes from a municipal ordinance on the city side, with its own adoption date and its own amendment history.
The clearance number holds, because it was keyed to neither map in the first place.
What the record has to name
An entry reading "VHFHSZ" and stopping there cannot be checked by anybody, including the person who wrote it. Four fields make it checkable, and two of the four differ across the crossing above.
Field | County side of pole 3 | City side |
Rating | Very High | Very High |
Code it comes from | PRC 4202, carried at 19 CCR 2201 | Gov. Code 51179, carried in an ordinance |
Edition to cite | map dated September 29, 2023, operative April 1, 2024 | ordinance number and date of adoption |
Obligation it attaches | none on the conductor | none on the conductor |
The obligations on that conductor sit in two other rows of the same file, and each carries its own citation: the determination of times and areas under PRC 4293, and the Table 1 case under GO 95 Rule 35. Those are the entries an auditor reads when the question is clearance.
When an inspector, a Fire Safe Council or a city attorney asks which zone a span is in, the answer is two facts, not one: the rating, and the instrument that assigned it. On the Berkeley segment the instrument is Ordinance No. 7,958-N.S., and the vote recorded on its face was nine ayes, no noes, none absent.
Further reading
State and Local Responsibility Areas: which rules follow which land: The classification this page's two zone schemes divide along, and the exemptions that stop at it.
High Fire-Threat District: what Tier 2 and Tier 3 change for vegetation work: The fire geography that does change a clearance number, drawn by the CPUC for its own rules.
PRC 4293: radial clearance in State Responsibility Areas: The determination of times and areas that switches the clearance duty on, and the distances behind it.
Frequently asked questions
Is a very high fire hazard severity zone the same thing as a State Responsibility Area?
No, and in the Bates Act chapter they exclude each other by definition. Government Code 51177(i) defines a very high fire hazard severity zone as an area the State Fire Marshal designated under Section 51178 "that is not a state responsibility area." A Very High rating also exists inside the State Responsibility Area, assigned by regulation under PRC 4202 and 4203 and currently carried at 19 CCR 2201. Same two words, two authorities, two instruments.
Does a Very High fire hazard severity rating require more clearance between vegetation and a conductor?
No California clearance rule keys on the rating. PRC 4292 and PRC 4293 bind on land cover plus a determination of times and areas by the Director of Forestry and Fire Protection or by the agency with primary fire protection responsibility. GO 95 Table 1 selects its case on the High Fire-Threat District, which the CPUC defines at Rule 21.2-D. In the January 2020 edition of GO 95 the word "severity" does not appear at all.
Can a city change the fire hazard severity zones CAL FIRE recommends?
In one direction. Government Code 51179(b) lets a local agency add areas the State Fire Marshal did not identify, and lets it raise a rating, on a finding supported by substantial evidence. Subdivision (b)(3) forbids decreasing a rating. Subdivision (d) makes the local change final and "not be rebuttable by the State Fire Marshal." The adopted ordinance goes to the State Board of Forestry and Fire Protection within 30 days.
Which citation is current for the State Responsibility Area fire hazard severity zone map?
19 CCR 2201, titled Fire Hazard Severity Zones in the SRA. It incorporates by reference the map "State Responsibility Area Fire Hazard Severity Zones," dated September 29, 2023, and it was filed January 31, 2024 and made operative April 1, 2024. It was renumbered out of 14 CCR 1280.01, which had itself been renumbered from 14 CCR 1280 in 2020.
