Firefighters Get Ready for Action as Start of County Fire Season Nears

When it comes to winter rainfall’s effect on the fire season, Mother Nature is damned if she does and damned if she doesn’t.

Everyone knows that a dry winter increases the danger of wildfires by leaving the water table low and the vegetation dry in Southern California’s mountains, canyons and other open areas.

But a wet winter, like the one just past, promotes rapid plant growth, leaving “large amounts of fuel that will burn real quick” once the summer’s heat inevitably dries things out, an Orange County fire official explained.

“We had a real heavy rainfall last winter,” said Capt. Lou Furst, public information officer for the Orange County Fire Department, “and that creates a great potential” for wildfire.

So when the fire season begins--local officials have tentatively set June 1 as the date--fire officials in Orange County will begin sending extra forces to fight even the smallest brush fires.

“We just send more equipment (and firefighters) to a fire when it’s fire season, because of the extreme hazard,” Furst said. “There’s a greater potential for a fire to really get going.”

Officials also will close some fire-prone areas to public use in unincorporated county territory and in the cities of Orange, Anaheim, Laguna Beach, Brea and San Clemente, Furst said.

The beginning of fire season is gauged by weighing a wide range of factors, Furst said. “Mostly it’s the weather, the dryness or the moisture.” Fire officials consider winds, temperatures and “the types of fuel that are in the area, the amount of moisture in the fuel,” he said.

(The season lasts until sufficient rain falls to reduce the fire hazard, usually in December or January, Furst said. Last year, fire season closed on Nov. 18.)

In the Cleveland National Forest, “we don’t have a specific fire season,” said U.S. Forest Service dispatcher Darryl Paige, “but we have increased our firefighting resources for the summer.”

“We’ll come to full-strength about June 8,” he said. Any fire-season closures in the national forest, he said, will be based on immediate conditions.

Riverside in Season Now

On the other side of the Santa Ana Mountains in Riverside County, fire season began nearly three weeks ago, officials there said.

“We’re into fire season right now,” said Engineer Erny O’Keefe of the California Department of Forestry, which provides fire service under contract to Riverside County unincorporated areas.

The Forestry Department declared its statewide fire season on May 5, O’Keefe said, but no Riverside County areas are closed because of fire danger.

“We man all of our state (trucks) and we have some state stations that are closed in the off-season that are reopened for the fire season,” she said. “We also hire additional manpower, seasonal firefighters. They work full time, but just during the fire season.”

Forces Increase

With the fire-season declaration, 43 full-time firefighters joined the department’s force of 325 paid and 800 volunteer firefighters in Riverside County, said Joanne Evans of the Forestry Department’s fire prevention bureau.

As the summer heats up, the number of seasonal firefighters will nearly double, Evans said.

“When we declare wild-land fire season,” Orange County’s Furst said, “what we’re saying is . . . be extra careful, be aware.”

Planned Orange County closures, which will affect the public but will not restrict property owners’ access, include:

- North of the Riverside Freeway from eastern Yorba Linda to the Los Angeles and San Bernardino county lines.

- Black Star Canyon Road from a mile north of Silverado Canyon Road to the Cleveland National Forest’s North Main Divide at the Riverside County line.

- Open areas from the Riverside Freeway south to San Diego County, between Cleveland National Forest on the east and, on the west, Anaheim Hills, the Orange city limits, the Marine Corps Air Station in El Toro, Mission Viejo and San Juan Capistrano. That includes residential communities in Silverado, Modjeska and Trabuco canyons.

- The Irvine area bounded by the San Diego Freeway, Newport Beach, Coast Highway, Laguna Beach and Laguna Canyon Road.

- The south Orange County coast bounded by Laguna Hills, Laguna Beach, Coast Highway, Laguna Niguel, La Paz Road and Moulton Parkway.