Plants, Animals Enjoy Relatively Mild Fire Season : Destruction: But East Bay firestorm makes it the worst year for property owners in the state.

For trees, birds and other animals, the predicted most fearsome of all California fire seasons is winding down as the gentlest on record. But it is the worst ever for property owners, chiefly the hill dwellers of Oakland and Berkeley.

State and federal government officials reported this paradoxical assessment Monday as the wildfire season neared a close with the coming of the first rains in Northern California since the long, dry summer ended, and fire danger ratings fall in the Southland.

“If this fire season continues the way it is now, it will go down in history as the mildest ever in California for acres burned,” reported spokeswoman Karen Terrill of the state Department of Forestry and Fire Protection. “But it already has gone down as the worst in history for structure loss in wild land fires.”

Terrill said that before the Oct. 19 firestorm that devoured neighborhoods in the wooded hills of Berkeley and Oakland, only 83 structures on state-protected lands had been destroyed since the June 1 start of the fire season. In only a matter of hours, the East Bay fires alone consumed more than 2,300 homes and 433 apartments.

Officials warned last spring that conditions were ripe to produce the “granddaddy” of all fire seasons during the summer and fall. These conditions included the prolonged drought, a killer freeze last winter leaving dead trees and the downpour of rain and snow in March that created new vegetation that could act as fire fuel.

Except for the deadly East Bay firestorm, the traditional summer and autumn wildfires almost bypassed the state, although searing Santa Ana winds are still possible in Southern California. “If the Santa Anas come up, we could well find ourselves fighting fire on Thanksgiving,” said Matt Mathes, California spokesman for the U.S. Forest Service.

The fire season is expected to end within the next few days in Northern California. Because Southern California is a highly combustible area, the fire season seldom ends.

Terrill reported that in spite of all the science-based forecasts, only 22,815 acres of state-protected lands have burned in the 1991 season, or about 80% fewer than the five-year average of 116,260.

In national forests, which account for about 20% of California, 10,743 acres have been consumed, Mathes said. By comparison, fire destroyed 112,846 acres in national forests last year and 57,784 in 1989, he said.

A spokeswoman for the National Park Service said reports are incomplete, but it is clear that fire consumed “far less” in park lands this year than last. In Yosemite and its adjoining areas alone last year, some 24,000 acres were burned.

The current season’s biggest fire, Mathes said, burned 1,990 acres last week in the Los Padres National Forest.

Terrill and Mathes credit the unusually cool summer temperatures for the relatively mild wildfire season throughout California, except for the late-breaking Oakland-Berkeley fire. They also cited intensified “initial attacks” on fires and on a heightened awareness of the fire danger by Californians.

“Fires are weather driven,” Terrill noted. But during the summer and early fall when fire danger is highest, temperatures were lower than average, humidities were higher than normal and moist ocean breezes edged out dry north winds from inland, she said. These conditions were reversed during the recent East Bay fires, she said.

As California’s drought worsened, state and federal firefighting agencies employed a beefed-up first attack on wildfires. Basically, it involved throwing a larger-than-normal force at the outset of a fire.

Overall, Mathes said, “I think we did fairly well through a combination of skill and luck.”