City Attorney Advocates Mandatory Fire Ordinance

By Alison St John / Reporter, KPBS Public Broadcasting

Published January 16, 2008 at 4:51 PM PST

This story was published more than 16 years ago.

San Diego City Attorney Mike Aguirre says the city should make mandatory new building codes for homes built in high risk wildfire areas. KPBS reporter Alison St John has more.

San Diego City Attorney Mike Aguirre says the city should make mandatory new building codes for homes built in high risk wildfire areas. KPBS reporter Alison St John has more.

The state of California wants local governments to declare certain areas “Very high fire hazard zones.”

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CalFire, the state's firefighting agency, has drawn up draft maps of these high risk zones.

Aguirre says he thinks San Diego city council should require new development in these zones to use fire resistant building designs and materials.

Aguirre : I think you'd get a lot of voluntary compliance, but there does need to be a mandatory component to it because the idea here is that we are all in this thing together.

Aguirre says existing homes in high risk areas should also be required to retrofit with fire resistant materials.

Such an ordinance would have to be approved by the city council. The council has already set up a new fire committee to consider questions like whether new building codes should be voluntary or mandatory.

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Alison St John, KPBS News.

Alison St John

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Alison St John currently serves as a general assignment reporter and occasionally co-hosts KPBS Midday Edition. She fell in love with KPBS Radio when she arrived in San Diego in 1985 and first heard NPR. She has been a voice on KPBS Radio since 1989, and has served as a news reporter for radio, TV and the web, as well as anchoring, hosting, producing and editing. Alison has reported on stories about North County and was based in the KPBS' North County Bureau. Alison covered the metro beat during the critical period of the San Diego City pension crisis, and the education beat while Alan Bersin was the controversial Superintendent of San Diego City School District. She covered health when the industry was converting to managed care and told welfare reform stories in the late 1990s when Clinton was “ending welfare as we know it.” She has covered land use issues extensively, looking at the challenges of meeting a growing population while preserving community character, and developing a better transportation system to meet environmental concerns. She has done many stories on the military in San Diego, and the series she edited on the challenges veterans face returning from active duty to civilian life won “Best of Show” from the San Diego Society of Professional Journalists. She occasionally hosts the KPBS Roundtable and KPBS Midday Edition. Alison has won awards from the San Diego Press Club, the Society of Professional Journalists, the Associated Press TV and Radio Association, and the California Golden Mike Awards. Alison was born in Tanzania, brought up in Scotland, and earned her degree in psychology and sociology from Durham University in England. Her postgraduate diploma is in student counseling. She worked in England, Nigeria, Switzerland, Belgium, India, and Japan before moving to the United States in 1981. She now lives in Oceanside and enjoys how her community is growing and changing.