Hazard Trees Near the Home
The trees that deserve a hard look.
A hazard tree raises your home’s fire risk through some mix of condition, species, and position. Dead or defective, resinous or oily, overhanging the roof or laddering fire into other canopy. Many San Diego lots have a few without the owner realizing it.
Condition, species, and position
Any one can matter. Together they compound. This is how we read a tree.
Condition
Dead, dying, or defective. Heavy dead branches, built-up litter, or shedding bark.
Species
Resinous or oily, or a heavy ember producer that throws fire well beyond itself.
Position
Overhanging the roof, close to the wall, or laddering fire up into other canopy.
A tree can be the ladder, or the litter
The risk is rarely the living canopy. It is the path a tree opens and the fuel it drops.
A tree with low branches and brush beneath it becomes the ladder that carries a ground fire up into the canopy and toward the house.
Van Wagner 1977, via the NWCG crown fire guidesEven a plant with a fiery reputation like eucalyptus is dangerous mostly through its dead litter and shedding, oily bark, not its green canopy.
Fire management and fire education newsletter, on eucalyptusThe San Diego ten
Common trees on local lots worth a closer look. None of these is banned, and many can stay with good placement and upkeep. This is judgment, not a list of trees to cut.
| Tree | Why it earns a look |
|---|---|
| Blue & red gum eucalyptus | Oily leaves, shedding bark, heavy litter, and prone to uprooting in wind |
| Mexican fan palm | A dry skirt of old fronds is a vertical torch |
| Canary Island date palm | The same fibrous frond fuel, at size |
| Italian cypress | A dense, resinous column that torches fast |
| Junipers | Resinous, and they hold dead interior material |
| Aleppo pine | Resinous needles and heavy litter |
| Canary Island pine | Large, resinous, heavy needle drop |
| Brazilian pepper | Oily and dense, and invasive |
| Acacia | Oily and fast-burning, several species invasive |
| Bamboo | Dense stands of dry culms carry fire quickly |
Mostly judgment, with a few real requirements
This is not a code checklist. But some jurisdictions do attach requirements, and some removals need a permit.
What we look for on your lot
On a walk we read your trees for exactly this, and you get back a prioritized read, in order of what matters most.
- Dead, dying, or defective trees, and heavy dead wood
- Trees overhanging the roof or within 10 feet of a chimney
- High-risk species too close to the house
- Trees laddering fire into other canopy
- What to remove, what to limb, what to monitor
- What comes first, and what can wait
Know which trees to worry about
A Risk Walk sorts your trees into remove, limb, and monitor, grounded in your conditions and your rules. What matters most, and what to do first. What you do with the findings, with us, with your own arborist, or yourself, is your call.