Firefighters Battle Blaze in Canyon Near San Clemente

A brush fire that roared up a wilderness canyon Monday was expected to keep burning into this morning, firefighters said.

“I think it’s going to be a long night,” Gary Layman, a spokesman for the Orange County Fire Authority, said Monday evening as more than 400 firefighters battled the blaze just north and east of San Clemente. He predicted that the fire would be contained by 6 a.m. but not before burning as much as 2,000 acres of brush and coming within a few miles of the Cleveland National Forest. “We’ll still be out there tomorrow,” he said.

The blaze broke out about 2 p.m. on property owned by TRW Inc. on Avenida Pico, Layman said. Flames quickly spread to vegetation on TRW’s 2,700-acre Capistrano Test Site, used for testing antennas, propulsion systems and military laser systems. The fire initially headed toward the facility’s 20 buildings, where 136 people work, but quickly turned east and swept up a brush-covered canyon.

“It hasn’t threatened any of our buildings,” Dan McClain, a TRW spokesman, said Monday afternoon. “We haven’t sent any of our people home. Basically it’s a brush fire in an unpopulated area.”

Also on Monday, a brush fire in San Bernardino destroyed only a few acres but damaged a home.

It started about 2 p.m., when a county flood control worker hit a rock with weed-clearing equipment and created a spark. Within minutes, the fire had moved up a hill in the David Way neighborhood and threatened three homes. Only one of the homes caught fire, and most of its attic was destroyed.

The cause of the Orange County fire has not been determined. The ease with which it spread raised concerns about what could be in store for the region once the Santa Ana winds kick in, bringing hot, dry desert air.

That could happen any time now, Layman said.

“All summer long we’ve had high fire-risk conditions just about every day,” he said. While humidity has been unusually high, he said, other risk factors--temperature, wind and topography--can combine to create a menace. When the Santa Anas blow, he said, the risk factors dramatically increase.

“We are already overdue,” he said of the winds, which generally begin around Sept. 1. “We’re just holding our breaths for the Santa Ana season to start.”

When it does, he said, the county Fire Authority will close some especially hazardous areas, such as back-country campgrounds, and patrol the region daily.

“We are very vigilant,” Layman said. “We will jump on any fire with a tremendous amount of equipment. We will have helicopters and fixed-wing aircraft right on the fire, and we won’t hesitate to make that call.”

Three fixed-wing aircraft and three helicopters were deployed to fight Monday’s blaze, Layman said. Besides the county Fire Authority, the California Department of Forestry, the Camp Pendleton Marine Base, the U.S. Forest Service and TRW’s own fire department sent personnel and equipment.

“We’re trying to hit it hard and fast,” said Mary Sabol, a spokeswoman for the Fire Authority. She said south Orange County “will probably get a lot of drift smoke.”

Times Community News correspondent Sharon Nagy contributed to this report.