‘On a full moon, it’s ethereal in here.’ : Signs of Life Sprouting Up : Fire Can Be Good for Chino Hills Park--but Too Much Could Be Fatal

The trees are black skeletons, motionless in the open prairie. A warm summer breeze skims by, but there’s nothing left on the trunks to rustle. Touch a branch, its bark as crispy as the skin of a burnt hot dog, and your hand is covered with soot.

This is the look of death by fire. These trees, once tough little scrub oaks, seem lifeless, ravaged a year ago by a quick-spreading wildfire.

But don’t let Mother Nature fool you.

Nearby, a grand old oak, as black as charcoal, is rapidly coming back to life. Springing from its charred trunk is a new, moist sapling, sporting clusters of tiny green leaves.

“Look at this. There’s no way you would think this tree would survive,” says Chino Hills park ranger Spencer Gilbert. “But here it is, coming back to life.”

Once again, as it has proven from Yellowstone to Yosemite, nature is showing in Chino Hills State Park that fire can be divine as well as deadly by clearing out the old and welcoming the new.

A year ago, two-thirds of the park, an ecological treasure nestled in the canyons above Yorba Linda, was torched by one of the season’s largest arson-sparked fires. Now, Chino Hills, located at the point where Orange, Riverside and San Bernardino counties converge, has re-emerged as a peaceful retreat for mountain bikers and hikers as well as cougars, deer and golden eagles.

Rendered as naked as the moon by the fire, the park is now lined with grasslands that are healthier than ever after March rains, and most of its trees are scarred but alive. Fields of thistles and oats are already shoulder high, so thick that some dirt trails are almost impassable.

“The park has recovered fantastically well,” says Jack Bath, a Cal Poly Pomona biology professor who recently surveyed the park to assess its recovery.

Rangers Worried

In fact, Chino Hills is so full of dry grasses that rangers fear that another arson-sparked wildfire is inevitable this summer. This time, they worry, it could be disastrous.

Fed by the spring rain, unwanted thistles and other foreign plants brought in by cattle ranchers have sprouted to over 5 feet tall, about three times taller than they were before last year’s wildfire. That means a wall of fire would tower 20 feet high, since flames shoot up four times higher than their fuel.

“Fire is a natural part of the environment, but this place has burned too many times,” says Ron Schafer, a district superintendent for the California Department of Parks and Recreation. “In the past five years, we’ve had three fires at Chino Hills State Park, and none were natural; they were all man-made.”

On the hot, windless afternoon of July 12, 1990, a 15-year-old boy was playing with a toy rocket when it crashed and burned near his home in Yorba Linda, just outside the park gate. The boy tried to stomp the fire out, but one taste of those tinder-dry grasses was all the flames needed.

Scarlet ribbons of fire raced through the park, scarring old sycamore trees and devouring acre-upon-acre of brittle grassland. Oaks and sycamores lit up by like eerie jack-o’-lanterns from embers tumbling inside their trunks, and billowing smoke and hot ash blotted out the setting sun.

Gilbert was off duty, taking an afternoon nap at home, in his state-owned cabin in the middle of the park, when the sky lit up around him. The fire was only a few miles away, racing northeast, toward him.

“I woke up and the sky was all yellow. It looked like something out of the movie ‘Apocalypse Now,’ ” he recalls.

By the time the last spark was stomped out the next day by a crew of several hundred firefighters, an estimated 7,000 of the park’s 11,000 acres were burned. Nearly all its golden hills had turned into craggy moonscapes.

“After the fire, these trails glowed in the moonlight. The hillsides were so black that the dirt roads were a stark contrast,” Gilbert says.

When the smoke cleared, state park officials feared for the worst. They initially thought 80% of the trees were dead.

But just when the chances of recovery looked dim, March showers brought new life to the park. Many of the trees managed to survive even though their bark and trunks were gutted by flames.

“It’s like a chimney effect,” Bath says. “Often you find the tree was killed on one side of its trunk but not the other, and down at the base it survived.”

Probably 95% of the park’s critters were able to escape the flames, too, he says.

More mountain lions than ever seem to be prowling the hills lately, and the golden eagles, hawks and coyotes have found plenty of rabbits, mice and squirrels for prey. Sage, a native plant that is a favorite of wildlife, is growing again, making the park as fragrant as a gourmet chef’s herb garden.

Parts of the park, such as San Juan Hill, are so wide open that they look like a scene from “Little House on the Prairie.” Other areas are deep, woodsy canyons, full of old oaks for shade and creeks that can swell so wide after rains that they are difficult to leap across.

Last year’s fire damage, however, hasn’t completely vanished. Many patches of native plants--chaparral, scrub oak and cactus--remain scorched, while thistles and other weeds thrive. Along one trail, a burnt pile of prickly pear cactus crunches when Gilbert walks on it, the thick tender plants reduced to layers of ash resembling barbecued snakes.

“You’ll be able to tell a fire came through here even years from now,” Schafer says. “But the trees are alive and we have just as much wildlife as before.”

The rains are credited with saving the park. Gilbert swears that the grasses grew a foot a day after them. “The people coming out here for 10 years say they’ve never seen anything like this,” he says.

The rain, Bath says, produced a sap that protects the large sycamores and oaks by sealing in water. He says most “can get by marginally” unless a fire strikes again this year, stunting their growth.

Only six of the 125 trees in the main northeast canyon are dead from the fire, Bath says. Dozens of little scrub oaks didn’t fare as well, being closer to the ground and surrounded by quick-burning grasses, but new ones will eventually sprout.

“It was probably good that we had that burn, because it got rid of the fuel and debris in the deeper canyons before the really high temperatures of summer,” he says.

It’s a fine line between a beneficial fire and a disastrous one. While occasional fires can renourish a park, frequent ones can destroy it. Park officials hope to soon begin controlled burns to prevent a buildup of fuel.

“For this area, 25 to 30 years would be the natural interval for fires. (More frequent fires) can have very disturbing effects,” Bath says.

For years, Chino Hills State Park has been a well-kept secret; only about 250 visitors spread out among its sprawling canyons, even on a busy day. Standing in the park, high above the congested Riverside Freeway, it’s hard to believe that it stands in the middle of one of the most rapidly growing areas of Southern California.

At night, the sounds of animals are almost primeval. Some city lights flicker in the distance, but the park is almost pitch black, even though civilization, in the form of Yorba Linda tract homes, is only a few miles away.

“On a full moon, it’s ethereal in here,” says Gilbert, who was dubious when he was assigned as a Chino Hills ranger after working at Orange County’s state beaches. Now, here a year and a half, the tanned surfer loves the park, relishing its tranquility and country feeling.

But the park is becoming increasingly popular, especially with mountain bikers from all over Southern California in search of wilderness. And more development is springing up in the surrounding canyons of Orange and San Bernardino counties.

And that worries Gilbert as well as local firefighters. Several battalion leaders from the Orange County Fire Department took a four-hour tour of the park with Gilbert on Tuesday, emerging with dire warnings that Chino Hills is a firestorm waiting to happen.

Especially worrisome is that houses are mere yards from its main gate, where last year’s brush fire ignited. The park department’s philosophy is to let wildfires burn, but that’s impossible with houses and people so close.

“We’re like a big fire ring here surrounded by homes,” Gilbert says. “This year we just might not be so lucky.”

Chino Hills State Park Chino Hills State Park is an 11,000-acre reserve above Yorba Linda that is split among Orange, Riverside and San Bernardino counties. Last year’s wildlife started outside its main gate and moved northeast, charring two-thirds of the park’s golden hills.Source: California Department of Parks and Recreation