Signs Point to a Dangerous Fire Season

Hundred-foot flames leaping from ridgelines, huge choppers circling overhead, exhausted firefighters trudging toward makeshift camps: The grimly familiar sights of a Southern California late summer have become the blight of late spring, and even residents beyond the range of falling ash are bracing for the months ahead.

The same grim conclusion comes from front-line firefighters and from weather experts sitting at cutting-edge computers. Conditions in the woods now are those of tinder-dry September, not milder, moister June. The dozens of routine fires that have been quenched after charring a few acres confirm it as much as the conflagrations that have so far consumed more than 45,000 acres--the equivalent of more than 70 square miles--around Saugus and Ojai.

In northern Los Angeles County, the Copper fire has swept over more than 25,000 acres, destroying at least nine homes and prompting the evacuation of 1,100 residents.

In Ventura County, the Wolf fire roared through the rugged back country of the Sespe Wilderness, burning more than 20,000 acres. Other wildfires have consumed more than 11,000 acres in the region since the beginning of May.

“We have the potential before us for a fire season of historic proportions in Southern California,” said Matt Mathes, a spokesman for the U.S. Forest Service. “The fast growth of these fires, the long flames, the intense heat, are unusual. The rate of spread is high, the release of energy from brush is high and the dryness of the vegetation is almost off the charts.”

In mid-April, officials throughout much of Southern California opened fire season a month earlier than usual.

After a winter of scant rain, it was more than an exercise in bureaucratic caution. Even in the spring months, firefighters noticed some disturbing signs. Fires burning beside streams were just as furious as those in areas that weren’t supposed to be cool and moist. On a foggy morning with 85% humidity in Orange County, a small grass fire raged unabated.

“It surprised me so much that I had to go out there and see it for myself,” said Capt. Steve Miller of the Orange County Fire Authority. “It was pretty indicative of just how dry things are.”

Orange County resident Jeanne Porter gazed with dismay at the brown hills surrounding her home. “Dead ground,” she called them, adding that there hadn’t been even a trickle in Trabuco Creek since winter.

“This is the driest year I’ve ever seen,” said Porter, a 24-year resident of the canyon. “It’s scary.”

Ventura County Fire Department spokesman Joe Luna sounded the same theme. The dry grasses blanketing the county and the dry skies last winter created “a design for disaster,” he said.

Only 600 acres went up in smoke during the county’s last fire season. That’s 3% of the land charred by the Wolf fire alone, with at least five months left before rains are likely.

From his office at the Interagency Fire Weather Center in Riverside, Forest Service meteorologist Ron Hamilton pores over records dating to 1924 and can find little precedent for the region’s current plight. The last four years in Southern California rival only the early 1960s, the driest of Hamilton’s recorded dry spells. And the figures most worrisome to firefighters--those gauging moisture in the plants that feed the fires--have rung alarm bells throughout the state.

“We can expect record dryness in fuels,” Hamilton said. “We’ve never seen them lower than we see them now, particularly at the higher elevations.”

Supervising a five-member team and analyzing computerized graphs with arcane titles like “1,000-Hour Dead Fuel Moisture,” Hamilton said the arid conditions are part of a normal, if not entirely predictable cycle. “It’s not something with a name, like El Nino,” he said. “Maybe El Dry-o.”

Whatever it’s called, this fire season will cost taxpayers big-time.

Fighting the two major blazes still burning has so far cost a total of at least $6.2 million, divided among federal, state and local agencies.

Congress has poured more money into Forest Service firefighting efforts since the devastating fires at Los Alamos, N.M., and in Montana two summers ago. Over the last two years, California’s forests have acquired an additional 30 firefighting crews, eight helicopters and 56 fire engines, said agency spokesman Mathes.

Local departments rely on the assistance of their counterparts around the state to ease the burden. Meanwhile, the California Department of Forestry and Fire Prevention dips into an emergency fund and routinely asks the Legislature for more.

“At the end of the budget year, they make us whole,” said department spokeswoman Karen Terrill. “It’s just a part of the process.”

So is the dry spell, some scientists say. Tree rings reflect “strongly developed dry periods” in California well before weather records were kept, said Dan Cayan, director of climate research at the Scripps Institution of Oceanography in La Jolla.

Cayan has his eye on another cycle that might spell relief. He said the waters of the tropical Pacific seem to be warming, suggesting an El Nino and the possibility of heavier-than-usual rains in California next spring.

“But that doesn’t really help us this summer,” he said.

In Ojai’s Soule Park, the firefighters knew that all too well as they took a breather from searing heat and the possibility of twisted ankles, broken bones and inhaled poison oak.

Leaning against a green Forest Service truck as his crew from Tahoe National Forest wolfed down sandwiches, Jack McKenzie was still streaked with black grit.

“We’re still fresh,” he said, “but this is the beginning of a long season.”

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Times staff writers Tina Dirmann, Tina Borgatta, Andrew Blankstein and Amanda Covarrubias contributed to this report.