RISING FROM THE ASHES : Sycamore Canyon Was Ravaged by Fire but Nature’s Scorched-Earth Policy Has Brought New Life to the Once-Charred Area

A year ago this month at Sycamore Canyon campground, air horns pierced the predawn silence and the voice of doom boomed over the P. A. system: “Attention . . . we have an emergency.”

A major brush fire was sweeping in from the east, fanned by 40 m.p.h. Santa Ana winds. Rousted at 6:20 a.m. by state rangers, the few hundred campers could smell the smoke and see embers dancing over distant hills like fireflies. Packing up in record time, the campers cleared out about three hours before the mile-wide wall of flames charged over the ridge and torched the canyon.

“It was an awesome sight,” said Frank Padilla Jr., a ranger who helped fight the fire.

No campers were injured, but the rustic campground in Point Mugu State Park was badly disfigured. The fire had cut a swath of destruction across the hills, turning them black. It had swooped into the canyon, burning groves of laurel sumac before leaping a fire road and running through several of the 56 campsites. Picnic tables went up in flames.

Miraculously, the fire spared the dozens of huge, sprawling sycamores that make the campground so distinctive.

Before the fire ran into La Jolla Beach and went out, nearly 4,000 acres had been charred, including 760 in the park, and the damage in Sycamore Canyon was severe enough for the state Department of Parks and Recreation to close the popular campground for more than five months.

It reopened April 6 and has hardly had a weekend vacancy since.

For months after the fire, the ground reeked of smoke and the landscape looked like a charcoal drawing. But nature quickly regrouped. Because of the high winds, the fire had raced quickly through the campground without developing blast-furnace intensity. Many plants and small trees were destroyed above ground but their root systems were unharmed. Days after the fire, crowning began and shoots popped up.

Today, black smudges still mar the vista in some areas and the dead, finger-like branches of the laurel sumac claw the sky. But Sycamore Canyon almost looks normal; in many ways, it has even improved.

“We look at the fire as a cleansing,” Padilla said. “It’s part of the natural cycle.”

When the abundant chaparral and coastal sage scrub get old--a process that takes less than 10 years--their branches become inedible to wildlife.

Fire wipes out the old branches and trunks, allowing young, tender shoots to take their place. And fire is part of the regeneration process of some plant species, whose seeds need the heat to germinate.

“Fire is good,” said Jo Kitz, president of the California Native Plant Society. “It’s there for a reason.”

Although the cause of last year’s fire is believed to be a faulty high-tension power pole in the Santa Monica Mountains about 2 1/2 miles east of Sycamore Canyon, natural wilderness fires occur in five- or 10-year cycles, Padilla said.

The sycamore trees were not always as lucky as they were last year when friendly winds pushed the flames to the northwest and a contingent of firefighters lit backfires. Over the decades--as recently as 50 years ago--the trees were destroyed in a firestorm, experts believe.

But the sycamores did not get to have a canyon named after them by looking like young, puny trees. In only a half-century, the trees grew into massive specimens, some with thick horizontal branches that run for 100 feet. How did they get that big?

The sycamores grow along the canyon riverbed, allowing their roots access to a constant underground water supply. The root systems--estimated to be a few centuries old--are enormous and vigorous. When a fire kills everything above ground, the roots go into a frenzy of reproduction.

“The pace is accelerated,” Kitz said, “and sycamores are relatively fast-growing compared to oaks.”

Ironically, while the sycamores were virtually untouched by last year’s fire, they met a different fate at the hands of man. According to Kitz, “a Santa Barbara fire crew chain-sawed at least two of the biggest sycamores after the fire had gone through without hurting the trees. Rangers made them stop.”

Kitz said the firefighters had cut the trees to create a fire break.

The fire caused a problem for the Native Plant Society. The obnoxious milk thistle, which is not indigenous, has big, flat leaves that spread rapidly across the ground, shielding sun from other plants. The heat from the fire enabled thistle seeds to germinate in large numbers.

Last spring, for the fourth year in a row, volunteers from the Native Plant Society grubbed the thistles. “The fire made a lot more work for us,” said Kitz, who led 10 volunteers in the project. “But it was a successful effort.”

Other positive effects of the fire in Sycamore Canyon: Next spring, experts expect the wildflowers--violets, everlasting, roses and lupine--to put on a spectacular show. And fire shouldn’t be a concern for at least two more years because the old, dead brush burned and was replaced by green growth.

“It’s safe here now,” Padilla said. “Essentially, the campground is fireproof.”