Texans Called to Battle Oil Fire at Fillmore

A crew of specially trained firefighters were dispatched Thursday from Texas to Ventura County to battle an oil well blaze that seriously injured one man and ignited an oil tanker truck and a 900-gallon oil tank, officials said.

Although the fire in an oil field in the Los Padres National Forest north of Fillmore was confined to the one well, tanker truck and storage tank, Ventura County fire officials said they expected it to burn at least two days.

“We’re looking at 48 hours before control,” said fire spokeswoman Shonna Matthews. “But all that depends on how much success these oil well fire guys have.”

The cause of the fire is under investigation, but it appeared to have started in the well and moved to the truck and storage tank, which lay 20 to 30 feet from the well, said National Forest Service spokesman Earl Clayton said.

It raged about two miles north of a condor nesting area in the Los Padres National Forest, prompting wildlife officials to call an alert just in case flames forced the evacuation of three Andean condor chicks.

Distance From Fire

“There’s still good drainage and a fair piece of property between the fire and the chicks,” said Joseph J. Dowhan of the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service.

The three Andean condor chicks were released last month in an experiment intended to test methods biologists would use in releasing endangered California condors into the wild in the 1990s.

Fire officials were concerned that dikes used to contain the fire could collapse in an explosion, igniting up to nine other storage tanks that hold nearly 1 million gallons of crude oil.

“The fire is burning under pressure, which means it could explode at any time,” said fire dispatcher Liz Pickles.