Ortega Blaze Could Be Controlled Today

Firefighters got the upper hand Friday on a Cleveland National Forest blaze that has burned 8,200 acres in Orange and Riverside counties and destroyed 11 structures near Lake Elsinore. They predicted complete control by this morning.

Aided by lighter winds and higher humidity, fire crews had more than 85% of the blaze encircled late Friday afternoon and began releasing many of the 2,300 people who fought the fire in recent days.

Authorities put the cost of suppressing the blaze at $1.5 million and estimated that the flames resulted in more than $1.1 million in damage to various structures in remote canyons and to the watershed that feeds Lake Elsinore.

Even as firefighters mopped up remaining hot spots in the blaze, which broke out in steep terrain Tuesday afternoon near Ortega Highway in Riverside County, officials were already voicing concern over what promises to be a long, hot season of flames in the parched hills of Southern California.

“It’s relatively early in the season for a fire this large,” said Dean McAlister, a U.S. Forest Service spokesman. “It may serve as an omen of things to come.”

Fire officials, meanwhile, warned residents in backcountry and rural areas to begin taking steps to prepare their property for the long fire season ahead. With the region in the third year of a drought, grassland areas need only a spark to set off an inferno that could dwarf the Ortega fire, authorities said.

Orange County fire officials say conditions are especially ripe in rural sections of the county.

“The scenario in Orange County is no different than out there,” Orange County Fire Department Capt. Hank Raymond said. “The possibility of a fire the magnitude of the Ortega fire is very real.

“We’ve got extreme conditions, and you top that off with the fact that all the kids are out of school and it’s the July 4th holiday coming up--well, we have a real problem. The whole thing seems designed for disaster.”

On the fire lines Friday, crews were hiking into the rugged, charred landscape along the Orange-Riverside county line to battle sections of the fire still consuming brush and timber deep inside the area, McAlister said. Officials hope to salvage some of the unaffected trees, brush and terrain, which can act as islands of habitat for birds and other wildlife that return to the area.

Officials had said early Friday that the fire would be contained in the afternoon. But they revised their estimates because of difficulty battling lingering flames on the southern edge of the blaze, inside the rugged, 3,400-acre San Mateo Wilderness Area. About 1,000 acres were charred in that sector, which stretches south from Ortega Highway toward the Camp Pendleton Marine Corps Base.

Fire crews were forced to work mostly with shovels, picks and other hand equipment to cut fire lines in that area because heavy equipment is not allowed in the wilderness, which is protected from intervention by man, authorities said. Although some chain saws helped speed the work, bulldozers and other heavy equipment were forbidden.

“It’s down to the hard grunt work, the stuff for the guys who like to sweat,” said Stephen Guarino, a Riverside County Fire Department spokesman. The blaze is not expected to be fully extinguished until midday Sunday at the earliest, he said.

But fire crews, drawn from throughout the western United States and as far north as Washington state, generally found their efforts proving far more effective than earlier in the week, when strong winds drove the flames.

The blaze grew especially intense Wednesday evening as it approached Lakeland Village, a secluded hamlet on the shores of Lake Elsinore.

Although firefighters managed to beat back the flames, which licked to the edges of some properties in the village, four cabins and six mobile homes were destroyed on Wednesday in Decker Canyon, a secluded fold in the hills west of Lake Elsinore. Another house was burned to the ground in nearby Long Canyon, authorities said.

Investigators again appealed to the public for help in identifying people who they believe started the fire near a roadside store just across the Orange County line, along the crest of Ortega Highway.

The highway will remain closed through the weekend as crews continue to mop up, effectively shutting down several popular campgrounds and picnic spots over the busy July 4 holiday.

All of the residents evacuated from 200 homes near Lake Elsinore Wednesday night were back after spending the night with friends or in the local high school gymnasium, authorities said. Some of the residents defied evacuation orders and helped fight the flames or spray down their houses with garden hoses.

Several property owners who live in the Cleveland National Forest area complained that authorities, in an effort to keep the public out of the fire area, have prevented residents from reaching their homes during the blaze.

Bob Fraser, a rancher who has lived in the area burned by the Ortega fire since the 1950s, said many of his backcountry neighbors were kept out for safety reasons.

But Fraser said that was a mistake, because many of the property owners have prepared to fight major fires by equipping their homes with computerized sprinkler systems or purchasing bulldozers to clear away brush.

“But what good are these preventive measures if you can’t put them into action?” said Fraser, who used a four-wheel-drive vehicle to skirt the roadblocks and reach his ranch about two miles from Upper San Juan Campground. Most of the vegetation on his property was destroyed, but he managed to save three adobe structures--including his house.

“The public must be kept out, but they have to devise a system to let residents back in there during the fire,” Fraser said. “My neighbor has a bulldozer and could have helped those fire crews, but he couldn’t get to it. It was nonsense.”