Fire Season Opens Amid Warnings to Residents : Drought: Officials urge safety precautions, calling the county’s dry hills and canyons ‘a fire time bomb.’

Orange County Fire Capt. Joe Kerr snapped off a dry, brittle branch from a laurel sumac bush and declared it a foreboding sign of the fire hazards that lurk in the county’s drought-stricken hills and canyons.

“If we go unscathed this year and don’t have a major fire, it’ll be a miracle,” he said. “The bottom line is that the hills are going to burn. It’s not a matter of if , it’s a matter of when. “

Such is the outlook among fire officials throughout the state today as they officially open yet another fire season.

For months, firefighters, developers and homeowners have been scrambling to remove dry weeds and dead plants and build firebreaks in the county’s backcountry in preparation for fire season. Today, county officials are posting warning signs, and closing about 97,000 acres to the public, mostly in rugged canyon areas throughout the county.

“This is our fourth drought year,” Kerr said. “So far this year, we are eight inches below the normal rainfall.” He said plants, like the laurel sumac bush, already are as dry as would normally be found in midsummer.

“Years past we’ve said, ‘This is a bad one, this is a bad one.’ Well, this year is also a bad one. Things have been escalating. . . . We don’t want the public to think we’re crying wolf, but it’s bad,” Kerr said.

With each successive drought year, more dry and dead plants accumulate, meaning a great deal more kindling for fires.

Fire officials have said that the conditions in the county are the worst they have been since the late 1940s, when there was a prolonged drought. Authorities are hoping that the county will experience some rainfall in the next couple of months, but they said fire hazards would still exist even with substantial precipitation.

Even without drought conditions, Southern California has always been a region where brush fires flourish. When high temperatures dry out the brush and arid Santa Ana winds blow through the region, “the stage is set for a worse case scenario,” Kerr said. Over the past several decades, dozens of people have died and hundreds of structures have been destroyed in Southern California fires.

Favorable weather conditions--and luck--have spared Orange County of huge fires in the past couple of years.

The county, however, has not escaped unscathed. In June, 1989, firefighters from Orange and Riverside counties battled a Cleveland National Forest blaze that burned more than 8,200 acres and destroyed 11 structures.

With the opening of fire season, fire officials said they are trying to increase public awareness and knowledge about fire dangers while also taking preventive action by closing down some areas.

“We’re trying to cut down on ignition sources such as off-road vehicle use and cigarette butts being thrown from car windows,” said Orange County Fire Department spokesman Capt. Hank Raymond.

“Basically we are living in a fire time bomb, and unless residents take fire safety measures seriously, catastrophic fires are only a matter of time,” he said.

Areas designated off limits to the public are in unincorporated county territory, and in the cities of Orange, Anaheim, Brea, San Clemente and Laguna Beach. The fire hazard zones will be off limits to the public until there is sufficient rainfall to reduce the hazard, officials said.

County fire officials have already sent hundreds of notices to canyon and foothill residents from Trabuco Canyon to San Juan Capistrano and in rural areas of Laguna Hills instructing them, among other things, to clear all vegetation within 100 feet of any structure.

One of the biggest fire threats that has always troubled fire officials is fireworks, authorities say. “We’ve already experienced some grass fires because of illegal fireworks. . . . We anticipate more fires will be caused by them,” Kerr said.

Like Orange County, other areas throughout California are gearing up for a long, hot fire season. Karen Terrill, information officer for the California Department of Forestry and Fire Protection, said: “As of Monday, the entire state will have opened fire season.”

Most of the major fires in Southern California occur in the late summer and early fall months and the season is usually closed by midwinter, experts said.

Some areas in Northern California were closed several weeks ago because the hazardous conditions there were exacerbated not only by drought, but also by insect infestation of trees and an abundance of dead wood on the ground, Terrill said.

As a result, seasonal firefighters are being put back on the payroll and remote fire stations are being reopened and manned 24 hours.

“Fire season to us means an increased state of readiness,” Terrill said.

FIRE SEASON CLOSURES

Beginning today, the Orange County Fire Department has closed dangerously dry areas in Orange, Anaheim, Brea, San Clemente, Laguna Beach and some unincorperated areas to the public to reduce the threat of brush fires.