Let Your House Burn Or Go to Jail

Here's a story of bureaucracy run amok as citizens are legally barred from protecting their own property:

As residents of Malibu used their own firetruck last month to protect their street from flames, homeowners on the other side of Los Angeles County were doing a slow burn.

Residents of rustic La Habra Heights are prohibited from rolling out personal fire engines to fight wildfires in their neighborhood of million-dollar homes.

Officials of the hilly, brush-covered city on the Orange County line say it's against the law for anyone other than members of La Habra Heights' two-truck volunteer fire department to "provide or conduct firefighting" within the 7-square-mile city.

La Habra Heights' city attorney issued a cease-and-desist order to the owner of a firetruck, warning that he could face misdemeanor charges if he used his 250-gallon pumper truck to fight fires.

George Edwardz said he was shocked to learn that "that kind of activity will get you thrown in jail and a $1,000 fine."

Edwardz, 39, an executive vice president of a communications firm that does satellite work for TV broadcasters, has lived in La Habra Heights for five years.

He bought his 1980 four-wheel-drive pumper truck for $7,200 from a department in Montour Falls, N.Y., in early 2006 after becoming alarmed at the slow response to his neighborhood.

Sometimes, he said, it takes more than 12 minutes for La Habra Heights' fire engines -- which travel through La Habra in Orange County -- to reach his neighborhood.

When he acquired his 1 1/2 -acre hillside property in 2002 he was concerned about fire protection, Edwardz said. But local maps indicated there were five fire stations scattered across La Habra Heights, including one just a quarter-mile from his house, he said.

"I never went down physically to see it was there," Edwardz said.

When he finally hunted the place down, he found that "Fire Station 5" was an unoccupied, single-vehicle garage behind a church.

In fact, he discovered, La Habra Heights has only one fire station, and it is on the opposite side of town.

I'm guessing that some folks in that town will get upset enough to demand a change in the law...or vote out the folks who refuse to go along.