Steps to Defuse Fire Threat Take Root : Thousand Oaks: Work is under way to clear brush-choked slopes near a 400-house subdivision.

Wildwood is a tight-knit, 1970s-vintage neighborhood of about 400 tract houses, perched on a Thousand Oaks plateau.

Wrapped in thickets of 30- to 60-year-old brush and capped with mostly wood shake roofs, the hilltop subdivision also is so flammable that fire officials say no one could stop a fast-moving wildfire such as last November’s from quickly destroying the neighborhood.

This week, after wading through three years of public hearings and obtaining numerous government permits, parks and fire officials began a massive brush-clearing project around Wildwood to defuse the threat.

“If you could take an aerial picture (of Wildwood) now and lay a picture of Laguna (after November’s wildfires) over it, that’s what it would look like after a wildfire here,” Ventura County Assistant Fire Chief Bob Roper said.

“That’s the potential of this area,” he said, sweeping his arm over the steep, brush-choked slopes that nuzzle up to the back yards along San Miguel Circle. “It would vent like a chimney.”

County fire officials urge homeowners in all urban-wilderness neighborhoods such as Wildwood to cut weeds around their homes, clean out their gutters and brush pine needles off their roofs.

Problem is, they are forbidden to clear all the brush off of Wildwood’s shoulders.

The slopes hugging the neighborhood are part of Wildwood Park, a natural preserve overseen by the Conejo Recreation and Park District, protected by the California Environmental Quality Act and peppered with Chumash archeological sites.

The trick is to remove enough brush to slow a potential fire while leaving enough to protect the environment, said John Van Tilburg of the Conejo Recreation and Park District.

“You reduce the fuel load, and you preserve the native brush,” Van Tilburg said. “You can imagine what it would be like to try to fight a fire on a slope like this. It’s real tough work--dangerous.”

So on Thursday morning, forestry crews from the Ventura School juvenile prison hacked with chain saws and axes through selected thickets of scrub oak and chaparral. The work began Wednesday and is expected to continue through the weekend.

Laboring in hot, westerly breezes blowing through the canyon, inmates in hard hats tossed cut brush onto piles in the center of the clearings they had made.

The piles will be burned later on a cooler, wetter, calmer day, fire officials said, when the weather is safe enough for controlled burning.

The crews spared some clumps of brush and left mulch and stumps behind to fertilize the ground so the brush will continue to grow and anchor slopes against the rain.

The selected cutting left a complex mosaic pattern that will be recut every few years as new brush grows.

Without the work, a fire in the neighborhood “would be impossible to control,” said Doug Campbell, a fire behavior analyst for the Ventura County Fire Department.

“The flame front would burn right into the community, and there’d be no defending it,” he said.

“You’d have to fall back a layer of houses and defend it from there,” sacrificing the first row of hillside houses to the fire, he said.

The mosaic cutting, however, will slow a fire, reduce the amount of wind-tossed embers hitting houses and give and firefighters a much better chance of protecting Wildwood, he said.

Residents have had questions about the work, but they have been mostly supportive, said Terry Raley, who oversees the county’s weed-abatement program.

Many are already planning to replace their deteriorating and flammable wood shake roofs with new roofs of flameproof tile or composites, which are required under a 1981 city building code, he said.

Marie Hostetler said that when her house was built 21 years ago, she and her husband, Clarence, had no idea of the fire potential the neighborhood would hold.

About three years ago, after learning of the danger, the Hostetlers replaced the aging wood roof of their Castillo Circle house with tiles.

She said of the brush-clearing, “I think it’s a good idea that they’re doing it ahead of time. . . . I imagine it’s a lot of extra expense, but in the long run, it pays.”

Actually, the program is costing the county almost nothing, Raley said. The inmate workers are provided free under a state program.

David Byars said he plans to replace his wood roof on San Miguel Circle within the year because of the fire hazard, but he did not know fire officials believed the neighborhood was in so much danger.

“I don’t even use my fireplace, I’m afraid it could possibly start it,” Byars said. As for the brush clearing, he said, “Who could object to that? Obviously that’s good.”

One homeowner said she is aware of the fire threat and grateful for the brush-clearing work around Wildwood, but a new roof might have to wait until her children finish college.

“It’s frightening,” said the woman, who declined to give her name. “We’ve been very fortunate where we are that we haven’t been hit, but we know the danger is there. Anything the county . . . is doing to protect this development is greatly appreciated.”