Vital Ortega Route Nears Reopening

Ortega Highway, the primary commuter route between Riverside County and south Orange County, was expected to reopen some time today for the first time since a 7,840-acre fire swept through Cleveland National Forest and forced its closure last Tuesday.

The California Highway Patrol closed a 25-mile stretch of the highway, California 74, so firefighters could use it to shuttle engines and other equipment to the blaze.

The highway, which links Interstate 5 in San Juan Capistrano with communities surrounding Lake Elsinore, also sustained fire damage that needed repair, officials said.

If the highway reopens today as scheduled, the Ortega route will help give holiday travelers access to several popular campgrounds and picnic spots during the busy July 4 holiday.

Meanwhile, a U.S. Forest Service spokeswoman said the fire, which destroyed 11 structures dotting canyons and hillsides near Lake Elsinore, was contained by 8 a.m. Sunday.

Linda Sinclear, a fire information officer, said officials expect to have extinguished the blaze by 6 p.m. today.

Sinclear said officials estimate that they have spent $2.4 million to douse the fire. Property damage to homes and buildings was estimated at another $1.1 million.

Earlier estimates of up to 8,400 acres burned in the fire were scaled down Sunday, when teams of firefighters and conservationists were in a better position to survey the scope of the damage to soil and wildlife.

Just 837 firefighters remained Sunday at the fire lines; about 2,300 have battled the wind-stoked flames.

“We’ve had a heavy release of personnel today,” Sinclear said.

The remaining firefighters--from the federal, state and county fire departments as well as National Park Service, California Conservation Corps and the American Red Cross--concentrated on scattered smoldering pockets and on “soil erosion,” Sinclear said.

“A rehabilitation team of biologists, hydrologists and soil scientists have been studying the area and working on how to prevent erosion,” she said. “They are seeding along the fire lines”--areas around the fire where bulldozers removed brush from the fire’s path.

It has not been determined who started the blaze in steep terrain off Ortega Highway, or whether it was accidentally or intentionally set.

Investigators again appealed to the public for help in identifying people believed to have started the fire near a roadside store just across the Orange County line, along the crest of the mountain highway.