COUNTYWIDE : Wild Lands Reopened as Fire Season Ends

Orange County wild land areas closed because of hazardous conditions will reopen to the public today after an unusually long fire season.

With the weekend’s rainfall, officials said, the danger of grass and brush fires in the county’s 300,000 acres of wild lands has been reduced, bringing an end to the 1995-96 fire season that began June 15.

Wild lands, unlike wilderness lands, are undeveloped areas where fire officials are allowed to create fire breaks and roads to assist fire prevention efforts.

During the fire season, about 178,000 acres of county wild lands are closed to the public, said Capt. Dan Young, spokesman for the Orange County Fire Authority.

A typical fire season runs from May through November, Young said, but this season’s scant rainfall heightened the danger.

“We also had a fairly long fire season in 1993 following all the firestorms in Malibu, but normally the season does not extend into January,” Young said.

The fact that the season is declared over, however, does not mean that the potential for disaster no longer exists, Young said. “In 1986, we had the 2,000-acre Modjeska Canyon fire in February,” he said.

A sudden shift in the weather could be hazardous, Young said: “Even with our recent rainfall, if we had Santa Ana winds tomorrow, we could have a serious fire threat by the end of the week. . . . The threat exists year-round.”

Areas now open to the public include Chino Hills State Park, Ronald W. Caspers Wilderness Park, parts of the Cleveland National Forest, Silverado and surrounding canyons, and the Aliso and Wood Canyons Regional Park.