Fire district may require defensible space on community's vacant lots

The North Lake Tahoe Fire Protection District hopes to introduce new fire ordinances that will keep Incline Village safer.

One of the new ordinances, adopted from the 2006 International Wildland Urban Interface Code, will require owners of vacant lots in Incline to have defensible space. Pete Mulvihill, NLTFPD assistant fire marshal, said that the new ordinance will apply defensible space standards to undeveloped lots, where in the past it only applied to lots with structures.

"What we have now is that property owners who have good defensible space on their own lot are sometimes next door to undeveloped lots that do not have good defensible space. We don't want that property owner to just have an envelope around their property and have to worry about the lot next to theirs," Mulvihill said.

The proposed amendment to the current ordinances is expected to go before the fire board for approval at its Oct. 17 meeting, which is open to the public.

If the board approves the amendment, Mulvihill said that he hopes the new ordinance will go into effect on Jan. 1, 2008.

He encouraged owners of vacant lots to call the fire district for a defensible space evaluation of their property.

"If they call us, we'll come out and walk them through an evaluation and help them to identify areas on their property that could be trouble. We'll even help them to find grant moneys if they are available...our goal is to make the town as safe as possible," Mulvihill said.

While Mulvihill says that the ordinance is needed, he said there weren't more than a couple dozen empty lots in town that need defensible space.

Another ordinance that Mulvihill hopes to adopt from the International Wildland Urban Interface Code regards sprinklers on three-story structures.

Currently, owners of two-story homes with partially exposed basements - basements which are submerged in the ground on one end but may be open on another - aren't required to have sprinkler systems for their homes.

"We actually do have an ordinance that applies to three-story homes that states they have to have a sprinkler system to fight fires at their home. What we'd like to do now is just extend that to two-story homes with basements, that way we cover all three-story structures," Mulvihill said. The ordinance will only apply to newly built homes and not existing structures.

Mulvihill said that the sprinkler systems are extremely helpful, and that last year a system saved a home from burning down while the owners were away.