Updates
Zone 0 developments, as they happen
August 2026
Aug 19: California adopts Zone 0. What actually changed, and what did not
The Board of Forestry approved the statewide Zone 0 regulation today, six years after AB 3074 mandated it and eight months after the executive-order deadline the Board missed. Three things to keep straight. One: adopted is not in effect. The package still needs Office of Administrative Law review, including a five-day public comment period, and Secretary of State publication; until then no compliance deadline is running. Two: the fence provisions in the approved package are unchanged from the July draft, including the five-foot noncombustible span where a fence or gate attaches to the house, the allowance for repairing existing wood fences with wood, and the ASTM E136 definition of noncombustible. Three: the certified "as adopted" text has not been published, so our reading comes from the Board's meeting package; we will check the certified version line by line and post a correction here if anything moved. The tracker has the full picture.
Launch: The Zone Zero Report goes live
This publication launched with the adopted regulation already on the books: 29 articles, the status tracker, the address checker, and the self-assessment. Every claim is sourced to regulation text and carries a fact-check date. When we get something wrong, the correction will appear on this page, dated, with the original error described plainly.
The story so far
The full regulatory timeline from AB 3074 (2020) through the July 2026 draft lives on the status tracker. The short version: the statute is six years old, the implementing rule missed one deadline and one vote before passing on August 19, 2026, six local jurisdictions got tired of waiting, and the insurance system quietly made noncombustible fencing a credited measure back in 2022.