The first thing I used to do when my fire meter was full was delete any trees or garden stuff. I used to get a glitch in Pets where one of the premade houses you could replace another with, once you purchased it, the second you went into build mode that fire warning came up, and removing stuff didn't fix it.
When I first moved to the PC version, I would still sparsely decorate my house and have no gardens because I was so used to the fire meter (PC doesn't have a fire meter).