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SRA vs LRA

Every parcel in San Mateo County sits in either the State Responsibility Area (SRA), where CAL FIRE is financially responsible for wildfire protection, or a Local Responsibility Area (LRA), protected by city, district, or county fire agencies. Which one you are in determines who inspects your defensible space, which building codes apply, and what disclosures you make when you sell.

SRA and LRA Defined

The State Responsibility Area is the portion of California where the state has the primary financial responsibility for preventing and suppressing wildfires. The SRA does not include land within city limits or under federal ownership. In San Mateo County, the SRA covers the county's unincorporated wildlands, including much of the coastside and the Skyline corridor, where CAL FIRE's San Mateo-Santa Cruz Unit (CZU) provides protection.

Local Responsibility Areas are everything else: incorporated cities and districts where local fire agencies provide protection. LRA parcels can still carry severe wildfire hazard. The state designates Fire Hazard Severity Zones in both SRA and LRA, and the 2024–2025 map updates expanded designated zones in many San Mateo County cities.

Why It Matters to You

  • Defensible space enforcement: Public Resources Code 4291 applies in the SRA and in designated hazard zones in the LRA, with inspections by CAL FIRE or your local fire agency depending on where you are.
  • Building standards: California Building Code Chapter 7A wildfire construction standards apply to new construction in SRA fire hazard zones and in LRA Very High zones (and more broadly as local agencies adopt the updated maps). See our WUI code information page.
  • Real estate disclosure: sellers must disclose SRA status and fire hazard zone designations, and since 2021, documented defensible space compliance and home hardening information.

Look up your parcel: the Office of the State Fire Marshal's Fire Hazard Severity Zone maps show SRA/LRA status and hazard designations by address. County-level planning information is at the San Mateo County fire severity zones page.

A Note on the Former SRA Fire Prevention Fee

From 2011 to 2017, the state charged owners of habitable structures in the SRA an annual Fire Prevention Fee of $150 per structure. The Legislature suspended the fee effective July 1, 2017 (Assembly Bill 398), replacing the funding with cap-and-trade revenue. SRA property owners no longer receive this bill. References to the fee, and the old firepreventionfee.org website, are obsolete.