Conservancy OKs Funds to Fight Fires

The Santa Monica Mountains Conservancy board has approved spending up to $100,000 for equipment and training to fight fires such as the Calabasas/Malibu blaze that torched nearly one-fifth of the agency’s parkland.

By a unanimous vote, the conservancy’s board of directors Monday night approved the expenditure of $75,000 for water pumps and hoses at park service facilities in Red Rock Canyon northwest of Topanga Canyon, Solstice Canyon, Liberty Canyon and elsewhere.

The board also approved the expenditure of up to $25,000 to train about a dozen park rangers in firefighting techniques. Installation of the new equipment and training are expected to be finished by next spring.

“We had a close fight in some places,” said conservancy Executive Director Joseph T. Edmiston. “We didn’t lose many major structures, but we learned a lesson: that our equipment, on the whole, wasn’t as good as it should have been.”

More than 850 acres of the conservancy’s 5,000 acres burned, including one of four buildings at Red Rock Wilderness Training Center, which caters mostly to low-income youths, said Ruth Kilday, executive director of the Mountains Conservancy Foundation.

The conservancy also lost a classroom, a historic homestead, a small barn and the caretaker’s house at Stunt Ranch, east of the Monte Nido area, Kilday said.

“There are always going to be fires,” Kilday said. “So it’s never too late to prepare for them.”