Firefighters Call Franklin Canyon Ripe for Disaster

Drought, dead chaparral and nearly a century of good fortune have turned Franklin Canyon, above Beverly Hills, into the area’s prime candidate for a wildfire this fall, fire officials said.

“Conditions are absolutely critical,” said Los Angeles County Fire Capt. Scott Franklin. “We have a really dynamite situation going on.”

Fire officials are divided on whether conditions in Franklin Canyon rival--or surpass--others they have seen, but they agree the situation there is precarious. City, county and National Parks Service officials were sufficiently alarmed to meet Friday to prepare for a potential disaster that they said could compare with the 1961 Bel-Air fire, in Stone Canyon, which destroyed more than 400 homes.

Insufficient Steps

The two canyons are similar in that they are close to populous neighborhoods of luxury homes that could be quickly engulfed by flames, Franklin and other officials said.

The similarity ends when the extent of highly flammable, dead chaparral is compared. Recent measurements show Franklin Canyon’s conditions are far more ominous than those in Stone Canyon in 1961, with twice as much dead brush as was measured in Stone Canyon 28 years ago, Franklin said.

In the next few weeks, county crews are scheduled to begin clearing and pruning brush to carve out several fire breaks on 440 acres of National Parks Service land in the canyon, which stretches from Beverly Drive and Franklin Canyon Road on the west to Coldwater Canyon Drive on the east. Nothing is now planned for the area’s largest landholder--the Department of Water and Power.

Officials agree these steps are insufficient to protect the canyon. If luck holds through this fire season, they recommend a controlled burn program similar to one begun several years ago as Stone Canyon once again became a fire menace. Bel-Air residents, wary of another fire, lobbied for the controlled burn; others feared that a controlled burn in an urban area was potentially as dangerous as any brush fire.

Franklin, who has been overseeing the county’s controlled burns for 10 years, said such a burn is essential for Franklin Canyon soon. Otherwise, he said, “If we do have a fire, it could run through the canyon.”

A chief element of the Franklin Canyon danger--and its slightly less endangered next-door neighbor, Benedict Canyon--is its population density, an “absolute nightmare for fire services” in terms of access and proximity to people and their homes, said U. S. Forest Service scientist Philip Riggan.

Mansions Threatened

“Watch out below if there are north winds. That area from Benedict Canyon to Coldwater is dynamite,” he said.

“Below” are the mansions of Beverly Hills.

Or, as Franklin’s counterpart with the city of Los Angeles, Battalion Chief Robert Mac Millan explained, “You’d have a heckuva problem heading your way.”

In addition to Santa Ana winds from the north, Mac Millan said normal onshore winds from the south-southwest could fan a wildfire, given current conditions.

A confluence of factors puts Franklin Canyon at high risk, even among other imperiled areas in the Santa Monica Mountains, any of which could ignite during the fire season, officials said.

Franklin Canyon, like the rest of the local mountain areas, is more vulnerable than usual because the chaparral has been dying off at an accelerated rate since 1985. Riggan, who has studied the phenomenon, has concluded the unusual “die-back” is the handiwork of “canker fungus,” a conclusion not universally accepted by other experts.

Weather Changes

This blight may have run amok because of drastic weather changes--a record-setting wet El Nino condition of several years, followed by a severe drought.

The rain encouraged lush growth, more and longer stems and leaves, which, in turn, became all the more desperate when deprived of moisture. “It throws a tremendous shock through the system,” Franklin said.

This pattern may be a harbinger of the “greenhouse effect,” the warming of the Earth’s atmosphere predicted if and when major climatic changes upend nature’s cyclical patterns, he said.

Air pollution, acting alone or in concert with other stresses, may also have weakened the shrubbery, causing it to dry up and die before its time, leaving volatile piles of fuel awaiting incineration.

As vegetation management coordinator for Los Angeles, Mac Millan said he teaches firefighters how to recognize and assess local plant life. He said his slides from the past four years “just slap you in the face” with their graphic depiction of wasted plant life. “Areas nice and green four years ago are entirely dead.”

Cyclical Fires

The recent vegetation casualties have a lot of company in Franklin Canyon, which is sort of a graveyard of dead biomass accumulated over nearly a century. In that time the canyon has escaped a major fire.

Cyclical fires occurring every 20 to 25 years are nature’s way of brush clearance, making way for new growth.

In some areas of Franklin Canyon, 50% of the chaparral is dead, an unusually high amount, Franklin said.

Recent water-level readings have been equally gloomy. The Palmer drought index is at 95%, which gives August an extremely high rating in dryness when compared to all years since 1895, Franklin said. And a gauge of plant-moisture level is at a reading typically not seen until the height of the fire season in October, he said.

For the second straight year the National Park Service placed a moratorium on controlled burns on their acreage. Last September, a controlled burn planned for Cheeseboro Canyon in Ventura County was called off at the last minute.

National Park Service spokeswoman Jean Bray said the ban in both years was enacted because federal fire crews were already spread too thin. Crews are at work in Idaho, Oregon and Northern California, Bray said.

Aggressive fire management experts have accused the National Park Service of being overly cautious in the wake of criticism after last summer’s Yellowstone National Park fire. In Yellowstone, fires, such as lightning fires, were allowed to burn themselves out under National Park Service monitoring. The fires burned out of control, enveloping huge sections of the park.

Policy Revised

The Yellowstone fire not only forced a reevaluation by the park service of its “let-burn,” policy, it also made officials wary of extensive use of controlled burns.

U.S. forester Robert Plantrich, whose territory is the Santa Monica Mountains, said: “Most people’s introduction to fire management had to do with the Yellowstone fire.”

The kind of controlled burn needed locally is set only in precise wind, temperature and humidity conditions, with equipment at the ready, he said.

The National Parks Service’s policy on controlled burns shortchanges California, he said, because by the time the fires go out elsewhere in the country, it’s too late in our fire season to do controlled burns.

With or without “fire management,” a fire is overdue in chaparral-thick Franklin Canyon, Plantrich said. “It’s not a question of if , but when . . . . “I just hope we can accomplish something before the big fire gets in there.”