O.C. Fire Authority chief defends agency’s initial response to Canyon 2 fire

After nearly a week of criticism of his agency’s response to the Canyon 2 fire, Orange County Fire Authority Interim Chief Patrick McIntosh announced Wednesday that he would ask his agency’s board of directors to authorize an independent review of the authority’s actions when the blaze broke out.

The fire, which began the morning of Oct. 9, burned more than 9,200 acres and destroyed or damaged nearly 60 homes in Anaheim Hills.

Fire Authority officials uncovered information about a call to the California Highway Patrol at 8:28 a.m. on Oct. 9, reporting flames in the area where the blaze broke out near the Riverside Freeway and Gypsum Canyon Road, McIntosh said.

About 5:41 a.m. that morning, the Fire Authority sent firetrucks from a station in Yorba Linda to help firefighters in the deadly Northern California wildfires, McIntosh said. That meant officials had to send out a call to off-duty firefighters in the agency to backfill that station, he added.

So when the 8:28 a.m. call came in to the CHP, that agency alerted the Fire Authority by 8:32 a.m., McIntosh said. Personnel at the station, who were not authorized to drive a truck to the blaze, were asked to go “take a quick look outside” to see whether it was serious, McIntosh said.

The workers reported “a lot of ash coming off the canyon area, but they did not see any fire,” McIntosh said.

At 9:27 a.m., a motorist passing by Gypsum Canyon Road reported seeing flames east of the 91 and south of the 241 in the burned-out area of the first Canyon fire, McIntosh said. At that time, firefighters from another station near the Yorba Linda one were sent to do a “smoke check,” McIntosh said. They reported a spot in the burned-out area, he added.

By 9:39 a.m., a “column of smoke” was seen, prompting a captain to go to the scene and alert another fire station to enable a full response, which was a “good decision,” McIntosh said. The fire chief said he thought “things could have been done differently” that morning, but wanted to leave it up to an independent reviewer to make recommendations before getting too specific about criticism.

Orange County Supervisor Todd Spitzer, who also serves on the Fire Authority board, said the agency should not have deployed mutual aid to the Northern California blaze without having that station back-filled right away.

“When we know we’re going to have red-flag conditions, we can’t deploy mutual aid outside our county and leave our flank unprotected,” Spitzer said.

Also, Spitzer added, the Fire Authority should have had eyes on the Canyon fire area to make sure no hot spots or embers were kicked up. Spitzer wants the Board of Supervisors to approve an independent review that could also go over the authority’s independent analysis of the fire response.

McIntosh also said his investigators had all but ruled out that a fire reported by Anaheim police the evening before at Sierra Peak could have sparked the Canyon 2 fire.