San Diego has experienced two major fire conflagrations in 2003 and 2007. As a result fire departments are even keener on removing combustible material from unoccupied land and even in some cases from occupied lots. Homeowner associations are susceptible to fire as much as anyone and it behooves associations to have a brush abatement plan in place. For many years some properties have been untended resulting in huge overgrown areas filled with highly combustible material that has accumulated over time. All dead plant material should be removed and combustible plant material should be thinned and shaped trimmed and cleared every year. After the first major clearing the annual trimming and clearing is much less expensive. The labor associated with brush removal can be exhaustively expensive as the plant material must either be dragged uphill for ultimate removal or downhill. Lack of access can increase the cost dramatically. Steep hillsides are very difficult to tame by hand. We recently employed a herd of goats and a few goat herders to clear an area that had not been tended for many a year. The initial feeding reduced the amount carried away enormously.
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