Watching for Fire Weather

High on a ridge overlooking the Antelope Valley sits a critical weapon in Los Angeles County’s firefighting arsenal.

But it looks more like a post-apocalyptic sculpture of a brontosaurus than a key element of firefighting. Surrounded by a chain-link fence topped with barbed wire, the Remote Automated Weather Station--or RAWS, as its keepers call it--transmits data on the hour to a satellite high above the Earth.

With the busiest months of the fire season fast approaching, the nine RAWS units stationed throughout the county will become especially important in fighting fires. County officials consider the units so valuable that four more, at a cost of about $18,000 each, are expected to be installed by year’s end.

“It takes measurements of wind speed and direction, rainfall, relative humidity, temperature, fuel moisture and fuel temperature,” said Deputy Jose de Jesus Lopez, who monitors the stations. “We can make staffing decisions based on the fire danger levels.”

Weather, say fire officials, can be the most critical factor in how a fire behaves.

Predictions about fire danger are based on the amount of moisture in ground vegetation, called fuel moisture levels, as well as weather forecasts.

This year has been a mixed bag for fire forecasters. The wet El Nino winter has made some officials nervous because of the increased plant growth, particularly in fire-prone mountain regions throughout the area.

But more rainfall and humidity have kept those plants at above-average fuel moisture levels, according to Los Angeles County Fire Department data. The more moisture in plants, the less likely a fire will spread quickly and easily.

“Right now we should pretty much be able to handle a fire if it breaks out,” said Capt. Tom Crowley of the Los Angeles city Fire Department. “But if we don’t get rain and it stays hot, it’s just all going to dry up.”

The uncertainty of the coming weeks is part of the reason Crowley and the firefighters at Fire Station 108 on Mulholland Drive in Sherman Oaks participated in a brush fire drill Friday with other companies from Sherman Oaks, Beverly Hills, Bel-Air, Hollywood Hills, Westwood, Hollywood and West Los Angeles. More drills were scheduled over the weekend in the Little Tujunga area.

The best time to practice, Crowley said, is before danger strikes.

“Once the Santa Ana winds start pushing the fires, we’ve learned not much will stop it except the ocean,” said Crowley, who has been a firefighter for 26 years.

The fire drills and weather forecasting equipment are part of the increasingly sophisticated firefighting efforts in Southern California. County fire officials last month acquired a portable weather station that they can take to ground zero at fires, where the heat and intensity often create their own weather system.

But some of the tools firefighters use to make staffing decisions haven’t changed much over the years. At Fire Station 108, wood sticks are weighed every afternoon to check the accumulation of moisture in the last 24 hours. The findings are used in connection with readings from other parts of the city, as well as information from the county, to issue daily fire danger reports. At the county Fire Department, fuel moisture levels in the brush at 18 sites throughout the county are checked at the same time every two weeks by the same fire deputy, to ensure accuracy. The resulting fire maps show the areas most at risk for quick-spreading fire.

Meanwhile, county and city officials continue to work to enforce brush clearance requirements.

This year, with the required clearance extended from 100 to 200 feet around structures, city fire officials have already inspected 165,000 properties and issued 21,000 notices of noncompliance. At least 7,000 have since cleared their lots, said Fire Capt. Paul Quagliata, head of the city’s brush clearance unit.

“We’ve had a lot of resistance this year,” said Quagliata, “mostly because of the increased cost of clearing more land.”

County fire officials said that they have a 75% compliance rate of the more than 31,000 properties that were sent notifications requiring brush clearance.

Such brush removal is considered essential to reducing fire risk and damage, especially in densely populated mountain communities in the Santa Monica Mountains, Baldwin Hills and the Mt. Washington / El Sereno area.

Clearing as much brush as possible is also important for future fire safety. The effects of El Nino may be felt even more next year, said Chief Herb Spitzer of the county Fire Department’s forestry division. “I’ve looked at the records dating back to 1919 and they show that the year after the heavy rainfall is always worse for fires,” he said.

How much worse?

“The year after an El Nino year we see an 85% increase in fires and 293% increase in acreage burned,” Spitzer said. “This fire season shouldn’t be as intense as it typically is, but next year could be terrible.”

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Gearing Up for Fire Season

The fire season is here, and officials are gearing up for what they fear could be a volatile one.

On the favorable side, the extra rain from El Nino left plants and trees with a higher moisture content than usual.

On the unfavorable side, grass that grew taller and denser because of all the rain has already dried out, which could help ignite the heavier brush.

“If the summer continues to be hot, we’ll lose the advantage of the live fuel moisture. It’s in the bank right now, but we’re doing some withdrawals,” said Battalion Chief Rob Wilmot, chairman of the Los Angeles Fire Department’s Brush Committee.

The concern is about areas that haven’t burned recently, especially the north slope of the Santa Monica Mountains, from Mulholland Highway down to the San Fernando Valley floor.

The potential for a severe fire increases with each year of accumulating dead brush. And with thousands of parcels in violation of the city’s brush clearance ordinance, the threat is obvious.