Wildfire Partly Contained as Winds Die

An end to stiff Santa Ana winds gave firefighters the upper hand Tuesday against a massive wildfire in Los Padres National Forest, as flames burned on into the wilderness and away from homes in Santa Paula and Fillmore.

The blaze, which has charred 10,400 acres since Sunday, was 48% contained by Tuesday evening, and officials said they expect it to be totally under control by the weekend. But they warned that this and other early season fires in the state could be harbingers of a vicious fire season to come.

This fire, more typical of an August-type

wildfire, “should serve as a wake-up call to all of Southern California to the danger of wildfires,” said Richard Andrews, of the Governor’s Office of Emergency Services.

California’s worst wildfires traditionally come the year after heavy rains, he said, and the winter of 1995 brought uncommonly wet storms.

“We only need to remember the siege of fires we had in 1993 to realize we face an enormous fire danger here,” Andrews told reporters at a morning press conference.

Lt. Gov. Gray Davis--who thanked firefighters face-to-face Tuesday and toured the maze of scorched canyons by helicopter--also warned against complacency.

“We get spoiled because we think we’re not supposed to have a fire before June,” said Davis, who is acting governor while Gov. Pete Wilson is on vacation. “Mother Nature’s going to have a fire whenever she wants.”

As arson investigators began focusing on oil-well equipment wiring that may have sparked the Grand fire, fire commanders began releasing crews, downsizing their forces from 2,000 firefighters to 1,085.

Among those relieved from duty were three prison inmate volunteers who suffered minor injuries working in the rugged back country and relentless heat. One was treated for heat exhaustion. One needed 10 stitches to close a chain-saw gash.

And a rockslide injured the ankle of a third inmate, who had to be carried down from a steep ridge to a place where a sheriff’s helicopter could pick him up.

“It’s really steep, and there’s nothing to hold the rocks and other loose debris in place” now that the fire has burned off the brush, said Montecito Division Chief Jim Langhorn. “It’s almost a sheer vertical drop in some places, and there’s a question about whether we should even be putting people at risk there.”

Many of the firefighters were fighting exhaustion, too.

Some who were called in to fight the blaze Sunday afternoon did not sleep until Monday night as the winds began dying. Others returning from the field to the base camp at Shiells Park in Fillmore said they were able to catch some shut-eye while up on the ridge.

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Many were shocked to see the fire so early in the season.

“This is a real early fire,” said Steve Benoit, a California Department of Forestry firefighter from the Monterey Ranger Unit. “If this is a taste of what it is going to be like this summer, it’s going to be something.”

Officials estimated that the blaze would cost $1.5 million for firefighting efforts and had destroyed up to $500,000 in crops and property.

The drop in winds to a mere 5 or 10 mph gave fire commanders a chance to regroup and change strategy.

They shifted from standing guard by homes to steering the fire along unpopulated canyons they had planned to use for controlled burns. Firefighters from as far away as Montana were bused onto the national parkland to relieve exhausted local, county and state firefighters.

Fire officials also took a look back at how a single spark raged quickly out of their grasp into an 11,000-acre blaze that came close to destroying homes in Fillmore and Santa Paula.

Ventura County Battalion Chief Keith Gurrola said he and the other 70 firefighters who first hit the flames Sunday north of Fillmore were no match for the high winds and steep terrain.

“We didn’t have the resources to attack it all the way around,” he said.

They attacked its eastern flank with three hand crews backed up with hoses fed by 10 engine crews, hoping the flames would be contained by Sespe Creek and two helicopters dropping water on its western flank, he said.

But 50-mph gusts lofted sparks across the creek, igniting new fires, and the blaze ran out of control, he said. “We got a spot about halfway up the hill and we couldn’t get our hands on it,” Gurrola said.

“I honestly think that if we had been able to drive to it, we could have stopped it,” he said.

“But it was an inaccessible area.”

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Ventura County Fire Chief James Sewell said the absence of Canadian-built Super-Scooper aircraft that Los Angeles County leased during last year’s fire season might not have made a difference. In many places, he said, the terrain was too rough and winds too high for the fast-refilling water bomber to fly safely.

On Tuesday afternoon another fire flared, with 15 acres burning in a field near Daly Road in Ojai, a county dispatcher said. Ten fire engines, two bulldozers, two helicopters, one water tanker and one county crew responded. At 6:30 p.m., it appeared to be contained.

Firefighters said no structures were endangered by the blaze.

Times correspondents Scott Hadly and Kelly David contributed to this report.