Fire Season to Get an Early Start

With an eye to wildfires already blazing in nearby counties, Orange County fire officials said Tuesday that arid conditions in local canyons probably will push the start date of fire season up to mid-May, a month earlier than usual.

Officials probably will open fire season about May 10 to May 15, sending out notice that 178,000 acres of the county’s wild lands are dangerously dry and off limits to the public, said Capt. Dan Young, spokesman for the Orange County Fire Authority.

“Right now, it’s still fairly green in most spots, but with these winds, they’re drying out quick,” Young said. “You can see how dry it is around us where there have already been some significant fires.”

Fanned by powerful winds up to 70 mph, fires in Ventura and Riverside counties in the past week have ravaged thousands of acres and destroyed a handful of buildings. A blaze in the Los Padres National Forest near Santa Paula torched 10,000 acres before being brought under control Tuesday.

Those fires and three days of local temperatures in the 90s have raised concerns in wild land areas that the heat may be on soon in Orange County.

Signs were posted Sunday at Ronald W. Caspers Wilderness Park banning open campfires, and officials are quickly stepping up mowing and trimming efforts to clear away potential plant fuel for fires.

“The creeks have dried up, the grasses have turned brown very quickly, so there is some concern,” said Mike Brajbic, senior ranger at Caspers, which is east of San Juan Capistrano along Ortega Highway. “We don’t normally expect these types of conditions until June 15, so it’s six weeks ahead of schedule.”

The fires in Riverside and Ventura were touched off after weeks of low humidity drying out brush, Young said. While the hot, dry desert winds also have swept across Orange County, the coastal county’s vegetation has been more protected by a clinging marine layer in recent weeks.

Young said the cloud cover keeps humidity high and blocks out a fair share of radiant sunlight.

“The marine influence takes some of the heat off,” he said. “Inland, in Yorba Linda and Anaheim Hills area, things are drying out, but overall we’re not nearly as dead and dry as [recent wildfire sites in] Monte Vista and Riverside.”

Humidity and temperature are key ingredients to a wildfire, but the overriding factor is wind, Young said.

“If its 102 degrees, that’s a miserable day, but not necessarily a huge danger,” he said. “But if you have a 90-degree day with 60-mph winds, that’s an incredible threat.”

The dangers of wildfires are well known in Orange County. In 1993, a blaze destroyed or damaged more than 400 homes in Laguna Beach and surrounding communities. The same week, the Ortega Highway fire wiped out 36 homes and blackened 22,000 acres of the county’s rural eastern edge.

The scorching heat Monday, with strong winds accompanying temperatures well into the 90s, prompted fire officials to issue a stepped-up response advisory that rarely occurs this early in the year, Young said. Fire departments were ready to respond with extra units and numbers--including bulldozers and aircraft for some spots--for blazes in brush fire areas, Young said.

“That’s very unusual for May, but we have to be ready to respond to the potential threat presented,” he said.

On Tuesday, about 75 firefighters battled a brush fire at Crown Valley Parkway and Pacific Coast Highway. The blaze burned one to two acres and took two hours to control, fire officials said.

The earliest start for a fire season in the last 15 years was in 1989, when fire authorities made the announcement May 1, Young said.

The Orange County fire season usually runs from June into November, with the most dangerous blazes usually coming in the fall. With scarce rainfall, last year’s unusually long season began in June and stretched into January of this year.

Less rain in the fall means less new plant growth, so fire-resistant greenery might be in short supply heading into the new season, Young said.

Huge rural blazes can erupt from a discarded cigarette, an untended campfire or even a spark from a starting car, fire officials say. To dodge the dangers, more than half of the county’s 300,000 acres of wild lands are closed until rainy season.

Wild land areas that close during fire season include portions of Chino Hills State Park, Ronald W. Caspers Wilderness Park, Silverado and surrounding canyons, the Aliso and Wood Canyons Regional Park and the Cleveland National Forest.