County Fire Season Officially Ends Saturday

With several inches of rainfall expected to soak the parched ground and new vegetation sprouting on the hillsides, Ventura County’s 1996 fire season will officially end Saturday, the Ventura County Fire Department said Wednesday.

Though brush fires devoured more than 11,000 acres in the county this season--the most in three years--not a single home was lost.

Normally, fire season officially begins May 15 and concludes after the first 2 inches of rain fall on the county--typically by Nov. 15. But this year’s season was unusually long.

Driven by dry Santa Ana winds and fed by brittle grass and brush, the Grand fire, which started April 28 and raged out of control for close to a week, scorched 10,925 acres between Fillmore and Santa Paula. And county fire officials thought the season was over a few weeks ago when the first rains fell and new grass pushed up through the soil.

“We kept getting the Santa Anas off and on, alternating with the cool and damp,” said Sandi Wells, the Fire Department’s public information officer. “The rain came later than usual, and there was still lots of dry grass and very little green growth, so we held back.”

During fire season, county fire officials keep five engines, one hand crew, one helicopter and a bulldozer at the ready just to fight brush fires. During the off-season, only one engine will be designated to respond to such calls. Additional equipment can be called in if necessary.

The 1995 fire season claimed 2,000 acres, and 202 acres burned in 1994. But the firestorms of 1993 blackened nearly 40,000 acres, including flames that ran over the hills from Thousand Oaks to the sea.

This year, firefighters battled about 100 brush fires of note--ranging in size from one quarter of an acre to the Grand fire.

But Wells said that even though some fires, such as the 475-acre Ventura blaze on Oct. 25, burned right up to people’s back fences, no homes caught fire. She attributed that record to the county’s weed-abatement program and firefighters’ aggressive training schedules.

Nearly two-thirds of the brush fires were set by arsonists, many of them by the same people, officials said.

Wells said people set fires for many different reasons, but that most arsonists are seduced by the drama, beauty and danger of the flames.

“Some people want insurance, some people want attention, and some people want to see all the fire equipment driving in,” Wells said.

But no sooner are the fires gone than the rains arrive, requiring fire departments to stock up on sandbags to help block floods and mudslides.

“We go from the end of the fire season, right into people washing out,” she said.