December Puts the Heat on County Firefighters

Super Scooper airplanes, capable of dumping 1,600 gallons of water on a wildfire in one drop, have been withdrawn from Southern California despite a drawn-out fire season.

But even if the specially designed planes were available when the latest rash of fires started last week in Ventura County, local fire officials say they wouldn’t have been used.

“They are not effective in high wind conditions and they are limited in steep terrain,” said Keith Gurrola, a battalion chief at Ventura County Fire Station 30 in Thousand Oaks. “It’s another tool in the toolbox of firefighting.”

Ventura County Fire Department officials said Wednesday the only thing that will truly check an unseasonably warm and gusty December will be some measurable rain. But forecasters say temperatures should remain in the mid- to upper 70s with breezes through Monday.

Until rains come, Fire Department officials said they will shuffle work schedules, look for extra equipment and work hand crews even harder.

“It’s been unusual, definitely,” said Bryan VandenBossche, division chief for the county Fire Department who oversees operations in Thousand Oaks and Simi Valley. “We didn’t expect the weather to be like this.”

The two Super Scoopers stationed at Van Nuys Airport from September through December were shipped back to their winter home in Canada last week.

“I don’t think we correctly projected for this warm weather and we sent them back to Quebec,” said Anthony Marrone, a battalion chief with the Los Angeles County Fire Department.

The Super Scooper, which flies low over lakes or the ocean to scoop up water, evolved from the CL-215, an amphibious aircraft designed by Bombardier Aerospace in Quebec. A three-month contract between the company and Los Angeles County ended last week.

With the latest fires coming during the height of the Christmas season, the Fire Department has had to respond with a depleted staff.

“We haven’t had to cancel any vacations but we have a lot of people out,” said Sandi Wells, a spokeswoman for the department.

Gurrola said he and his crew weren’t among those taking a Christmas break. For the second year in a row, they fought wildfires in the county on Christmas Day.

“Obviously the holidays are special to firefighters, but when we are working Christmas Day we’re gone for the entire day,” Gurrola said. “To miss Christmas with the family two years in a row is not easy. They understand it’s part of my job, but they don’t like it.”

VandenBossche said the dry December, the fires and the threat of more fires have forced officials to make last-minute deals for equipment. With no rain and more unseasonably warm temperatures predicted for the next week to 10 days, the threat of more wildfires will remain, he said.

A Fire Department contract for a water-dropping helicopter ended in November, usually the end of the fire season, VandenBossche said. The department got a last-minute assist from the California Department of Forestry, which stationed a helicopter and air tanker at Camarillo Airport earlier this month.

Both were used Tuesday to fight the Thousand Oaks fire, he said.

Tuesday’s fire burned at least 600 acres near a gated community and cost the county $500,000 in personnel and support costs, Wells said.

In one of the worst Decembers in recent memory, other fires near Ventura, in Fillmore and around Somis and Santa Paula have burned about 1,000 acres and cost more than $1 million in overtime pay.

No structures have been destroyed.