Officials Urge Preparation for Wildfire Season : Emergencies: Report recommends better communications, training and equipment in wake of last year’s blazes.

While praising the swift and effective mutual aid response to last fall’s series of devastating Southern California wildfires, government emergency officials issued a report Friday recommending 95 potentially costly communications, training and equipment improvements to battle blazes more effectively.

The state and local officials, speaking at a news conference in Malibu, also issued a warning that more fires the size of those that scorched Altadena, Malibu, and Laguna Beach remain a distinct possibility during the next three months in Southern California.

“Last year’s fires did not cancel out the threat of more fires,” said Chief Deputy Chief Stephen Sherrill of the Los Angeles County Fire Department. “They told us that the weather and brush conditions were in such a state that we’re continuing to look at disastrous-type conditions.”

More than 48,000 acres and 37 homes already have burned this week in an arson-sparked blaze in rural San Luis Obispo County. But the traditional fire season in Southern California does not begin until September and continues through November, said Governor’s Office of Emergency Services Director Richard Andrews.

“We’ve got a long way to go to get through it this year,” Andrews said outside Malibu City Hall. “But there’s still time to clear brush.”

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The two-week series of fires that began Oct. 26 required the largest call for mutual aid since the system was set in place 44 years ago, according to the 38-page report released by the Office of Emergency Services. More than 15,000 firefighters and 1,500 fire engines were dispatched to battle 22 fires in six Southern California counties that consumed nearly 200,000 acres and 1,200 structures, injured 62 people and left four dead.

Andrews said Friday that arrangements have recently been completed for a pair of National Guard firefighting planes based at Point Mugu Naval Air Station to be available for fire emergencies within 13 hours after state officials request them. Previously, it had taken 24 hours to equip and staff the C-130 cargo planes for fire duty.

Because of the delay, the planes were inaccessible during the fast-spreading Altadena and Laguna Hills fires Oct. 27 in which several hundred homes were destroyed. However, the newly issued state report says that even if the planes had been more quickly activated, they probably would have been used to fight wildfires in Ventura County rather than the Altadena and Laguna Hills blazes.

Recommendations in the report include the use of satellite technology to improve radio communications in remote canyons and additional training for firefighters called in under mutual aid pacts who are not fully prepared or equipped to battle massive wildfires.

Andrews said he could not place a price tag on such improvements. However, Los Angeles City Fire Chief Donald O. Manning said the cost of satellite relay equipment alone could be in the tens of millions of dollars. That, said Manning and other officials at the news conference, compares to the estimated $1-billion loss in last year’s fires.

The state report does not discuss whether the state would be better off purchasing or leasing CL-415 “Super Scooper” airplanes that can pick up 1,600 gallons of water at a time and dump it, often within minutes, on wildfires.

In 1992, Gov. Pete Wilson, citing the high cost, vetoed a bill that would have provided $1.8 million to test the Canadian-made aircraft. Andrews and Sherrill said Friday that county and state fire officials will meet early next week to discuss possible alternate funding sources, including the federal government or insurance companies, to help lease the plane for testing this fall.

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Andrews said the “Super Scooper” is “not a silver bullet” because it is of limited use in inland areas or at times when ocean waves are choppy. Also still unclear, he said, is whether it is worth buying one of the planes for $17 million when the same amount would buy several smaller fixed-wing firefighting planes.

However, “the time has come for new tests of the ‘Super Scooper’ (to determine) what its potential and limitations may be,” Andrews said.

Afterward, Malibu Mayor Jeffrey W. Kramer, who hosted the news conference, said he was “a bit troubled” by the state’s less than lightning pace in leasing or acquiring the plane.

“It evinces a little bit of shortsightedness,” Kramer said. The cost of these fires is enormous.”

Among the other speakers at the news conference was state Department of Forestry Director Richard Wilson, who urged that about 1 million acres of woodland a year be cleared through cutting or controlled burns in order to reduce the potential for runaway wildfires.

“We have a rather grim situation,” Wilson said, “in that the dryness, the accumulated effect of drought, the build-up of fuels . . . makes the whole strategy of fire-fighting a more complicated business.”

Sherrill also called for stronger suppression measures, saying that it is extremely difficult to fight blazes fueled by 50-year-old brush, which shoots flames up to 200 feet high in narrow, remote canyons.

“In Malibu, everything was done that could be done,” Sherrill said. “We faced an awesome, disastrous force, (including) 30 to 50 m.p.h. winds coming from four different directions.”