Jittery Officials Cancel 150-Acre Agoura Burn

Concern over disastrous fires in Yellowstone National Park has prompted cancellation of a controlled burn scheduled today that would have completed a barrier protecting part of Agoura Hills from wildfires, the Los Angeles County Fire Department said Wednesday.

The department received official notification from the National Park Service this week that the burn--scheduled on 150 acres of the Santa Monica Mountains National Recreation Area--is canceled, said Fire Capt. Scott Franklin, the department’s vegetation-management officer.

The burn was intended to form the second half of a firebreak in Cheeseboro Canyon, where the county Fire Department burned 150 acres on July 13. The burns destroy dead branches and brush that could add intensity to potential wildfires driven by Santa Ana winds, Franklin said.

County plans for three similar controlled burns covering 1,000 acres in the Zuma Canyon and Zuma Ridge areas next year also have been put on hold, Franklin said.

“Because of the problem they’ve had at Yellowstone, I think they’re going in the wrong direction when they say you can’t do any more fire management anywhere else in the U.S. parks,” Franklin said. “It’s a political decision . . . it’s just an overreaction.”

After the Yellowstone fires began raging out of control this summer, the Park Service on July 22 suspended its “let burn” fire-management policy amid charges by area residents that the agency waited too long to begin fighting the fires. It was confirmed last week that the policy--which discourages human intervention in wilderness fires not caused by man--is suspended for the remainder of 1988 and possibly longer.

Spokesman George Berklacy said that the Park Service indefinitely suspended controlled burns on federal parkland nationwide at the same time it suspended the “let burn” policy.

The suspensions are “very much a temporary measure as a result of the situation in Yellowstone,” Berklacy said.

Firefighters have contained the Yellowstone fires, which consumed about 1.3 million acres, including 750,000 acres of the 2.2-million-acre national park, Berklacy said.

Dead branches and dry grass accumulate naturally in park areas such as Cheeseboro Canyon, Franklin said. But fire danger has been compounded by die-back, a phenomenon believed to have killed about half the wild brush in the county, Franklin said.

Robert Plantrich, forester for the Santa Monica Mountains National Recreation Area, expressed disappointment that the Cheeseboro Canyon controlled burn was canceled. “Part of our strategy was to create an important firebreak,” he said.

The controlled burns were to give a rural section of Agoura Hills known as Old Agoura added protection from wind-driven fires from Las Virgenes Canyon to the northeast, Plantrich said.