Officials Call Disastrous Local Blaze Unlikely : Fires: ‘Sundowners’ and other conditions in Santa Barbara were unique to that area.

A repeat of the firestorm that swept through Santa Barbara neighborhoods this week is unlikely to occur in Ventura County because several conditions unique to the Paint Fire do not exist here, city and county fire officials said Friday.

“Sundowner winds” and kindling-dry conditions resulting from months of severe water rationing made a devastating fire much more likely in Santa Barbara than in the rest of drought-parched Southern California, Ventura fire officials said.

“I think we would make out fairly well,” said Ventura County Assistant Fire Chief Robert Crim.

“We don’t have the sundowners,” Crim said of the erratic gusts that blow down from the Santa Ynez Mountains. “And the decorative plants next to their homes were very, very dry.”

In many cases, the Santa Barbara fire was fueled by the parched shrubs and lawns that could not be watered because of severe rationing.

Fifty-foot-tall palm trees that normally would burn only on their fronds were so dry that they burned all the way to the ground, said local firefighters dispatched to the Paint Fire.

Despite limited water rationing in Ojai and Ventura, irrigation of plants and lawns is still permitted in this county.

County fire authorities point to other factors that would make a major fire in Ventura County more controllable. They include strict enforcement of laws that require brush to be cleared away from structures, better access for fire engines to densely populated areas and more firefighters per fire engine.

“The real difference between the city of Ventura and the city of Santa Barbara is we enforce the state law that brush must be 100 feet from structures,” said Barry Simmons, a spokesman for the Ventura City Fire Department.

The movement of firefighters in Santa Barbara was restricted because the threatened neighborhoods backed up to portions of the Los Padres National Forest that do not have roads, fire officials said. Dead-end streets often forced firefighters to flee instead of trying to save houses from the fire, county fire officials said.

Only a few areas of Ventura County have homes that are so inaccessible, officials said. Even in rural communities such as Fillmore, most homes can be approached from several directions.

Roger Campbell, assistant fire chief of Fillmore’s 19-person volunteer Fire Department, said a dozen homes on Foothill Road that are adjacent to brush are all accessible and near the city’s main reservoir.

“We are able to individually protect each house right up against the brush line,” Campbell said. “We run lines from the reservoir to each house in the area and station two firemen at each home.”

In the seven brush fires in Fillmore since 1973, the city has never lost a house, he said.

In addition, combustible wood shake roofs are prohibited on new structures in the county’s high-hazard areas and in many cities, officials said. Houses with more than 5,000 square feet must also have sprinkler systems in most of the county.

The greatest recent test of Ventura County’s ability to keep a major fire away from houses was in 1985, when a firefighters’ line stopped the 119,000-acre Wheeler Fire in north Ojai, said George Lund, assistant chief of operations in the county Fire Department.

“The results would probably be just about the same as they were in 1985,” Lund said. Eighteen structures valued at $8.6 million burned during the two-week fire, contrasted with about 500 homes worth as much as a half-billion dollars total in Santa Barbara.

The county Fire Department, which accounts for most of Ventura County’s firefighting capability, assigns three firefighters to each of the fire engines at its stations, officials said. So do Ventura, Oxnard, Fillmore and Santa Paula, the only cities not protected by the county Fire Department.

“Santa Barbara has two people on some engines; we have a minimum of three,” said Simmons of Ventura’s city Fire Department. “That makes a huge difference in fighting a brush fire.”

Simmons said that when he has fought fires in the Santa Barbara area, he has also found that water pressure from fire hydrants is lower than in Ventura. Lund, of the county Fire Department, said that water pressure countywide is generally good.

But, in some older neighborhoods, water pressure is lower and the chance of a catastrophic fire is greater, Lund said.

“We have a few systems that give us concerns if we put heavy demands on them,” Lund said. “Those are older communities--25 years old or more--in hilly areas where roads are narrow and the systems are not as effective.”

Crim said that such areas include Susana Knolls and Box Canyon in Simi Valley, some parts of the upper Ojai Valley and Ventu Park in Thousand Oaks.

As in Santa Barbara, this county’s older neighborhoods generally have fewer hydrants, Lund said.

“We’ve got the same situation in our older areas, where the fire hydrants are 1,000 feet or more apart. We like to see them no less than 500 feet apart,” Lund said.

Fire officials said that Ventura County’s best defense against a devastating fire is the statewide network of fire agencies that would respond.

For example, the Ventura County Fire Department dispatched 23 of its 55 engines and 95 of its 350 firefighters to the Santa Barbara fire. They fought for 26 straight hours at a cost of about $100,000 to the county, Lund said. About three-quarters of that amount probably can be recovered through state and federal disaster programs, he said.

The cities of Ventura, Oxnard and Fillmore also dispatched engine crews.

Although 23 of its engines were in Santa Barbara, the county department made sure all of its stations were covered by placing all three of its firefighting shifts on duty. Six fire stations were without engine companies, but city departments were on alert in case of fire, Lund said.

STORIES: A1, A26-A27, B5, B11, B20