Experimental Chaparral Fire Delayed by Weather, AQMD

A change in the weather and a change in the position of South Coast Air Quality Management District officials have delayed a large experimental chaparral fire that was to be set in the Angeles National Forest this week.

The fire, which could have been set as early as Wednesday in 1,200 acres of brush in the hills north of San Dimas, is to be studied by dozens of scientists and more than a half dozen government agencies--from the Defense Department to the Los Angeles County Fire Department.

The fire was planned two years ago as a simple burn-off of dry brush, U.S. Forest Service officials said. But it has grown to be the focus of major scientific studies of phenomena ranging from the effects of wild fires on erosion and flooding to “nuclear winter”--a theory that smoke generated in a nuclear war would block the sun and chill the Earth.

Last Thursday, AQMD staff informed the U.S. Forest Service, which is in charge of the burn, that a variance that had been issued last January was inadequate, said Cindy Simovich, a member of the AQMD’s legal staff. That variance was granted to the county Fire Department.

AQMD Not Aware

“At the time, we weren’t aware that it was a joint project (of the fire deparment) with the Forest Service and that there was some research that will be going on as well,” Simovich said.

She said that the key question is whether this fire is primarily a “vegetation management burn”--designed to destroy flammable brush in a controlled way before it catches fire accidentally--or a burn conducted for scientific research. Management burns do not require special variances from the AQMD as long as the district is consulted prior to the fire; a research fire would require a public hearing before a variance can be granted, she said.

The fire was initially delayed this week because forecasts predicted several changes in weather that would take away the set of conditions that must be met before such a fire can be set. “The five-day forecast predicts northeast winds Thursday,” said Bob Swinford, a Forest Service spokesman. Such winds, which exist during a Santa Ana condition, could carry smoke and embers over the Los Angeles basin, he said.

He said it is “lucky” that the bad atmospheric conditions developed because the delay will probably provide enough time to work out the differences between AQMD and the Forest Service.

‘Management Burn’

Simovich said the determination of whether the fire’s purpose is research or prevention must be made by the AQMD hearing board. Discussions between Forest Service officials and the board will take place this week. “Hopefully, this can be cleared up before Monday,” she said.

“From our viewpoint it was always primarily a management burn,” said Capt. Scott Franklin, vegetation management coordinator for the Los Angeles County Fire Department, which is assisting the Forest Service in lighting and controlling the blaze.

Franklin was the official who brought the plan for the burn before the AQMD board back in January.

The San Dimas burn was presented to the board at a hearing on Jan. 29 as one fire in a long “laundry list” of other management burns planned for the Santa Monica Mountains, the San Gabriel Mountains and the Saugus area, Franklin said.

Franklin said he spelled out to the AQMD hearing board at the time that the research projects had been “piggybacked” onto a management burn that has been planned for two years to protect the San Dimas Experimental Forest, a 20,000-acre portion of the Angeles National Forest that has been set aside for scientific studies for 50 years.

He said he emphasized then that the collected data would be valuable for local, state and federal agencies in assessing a wide variety of effects of wildfires--from their contribution to air pollution, erosion and flooding in Los Angeles to their possible contribution to global ecological phenomena.

But the point that was most emphasized, Franklin said, was that all of the research projects that will surround the burn are secondary. The primary purpose of the fire was always to burn off an area of vegetation that has not burned since 1960 and that lies at the foot of the San Dimas Experimental Forest.

“The basic premise was to protect a pristine research area,” he said. “All these other folks came on afterwards.”

Franklin said he is optimistic that the misunderstanding can be cleared up, but admitted that there is a chance it will not be. “I would be ashamed to see us not be able to move forward, because we need that data vitally,” he said. “Scientists have been trying to duplicate these kinds of fires in the lab using things like ice cream sticks. But translating that to the real world is practically meaningless. This data will help everybody.”