Fire Officials Brace for Long, Grueling Season

After one of the driest winters in Southern California’s recorded history, the ingredients are all here to make this a summer memorable for wildfires. Fire crews, already dousing flare-ups in the region’s scrubby hills, are gearing up for an intense season and preaching the commandments of brush clearance.

Last year’s fire season never really ended. It just slipped into this year’s. The parched chaparral snaps like kindling. The grass is brittle and matted, the color of dirty straw.

Still, predictions can be tricky. “Ask me what sort of fire season we are going to have and I say, ‘I’ll tell you in November,’” said John Craney, a state fire protection official.

Nature can defy expectations. Consider the final year of the last drought, when less wild land burned than had in decades. The conditions were right for fires, but weather and man didn’t start any.

Conditions are right again.

The twig Ken Pimlott plucked from a chamise bush near the edge of the Cleveland National Forest in Riverside County last week was brown and half naked, bereft of new growth. “For me to walk up and break this, at this time of year--that’s the problem,” said Pimlott, a division chief for the state Department of Forestry and Fire Protection.

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Moisture Levels Ominously Low

In wildfire parlance, fuel moisture levels are ominously low for May. The chaparral normally would not be this dry until the fall. Men who’ve been fighting fires for longer than the 36-year-old Pimlott has been alive tell him they’ve never seen the brush so dry so early in the season.

In the Inyo National Forest bordering the Owens Valley, some stations are reporting the lowest fuel moisture since they began collecting data 17 years ago. In the Angeles National Forest recently, stream banks were dry enough to allow flames to creep along them.

“In some sense, we’ve never left the fire season this year south of the Tehachapis,” said Paul Smith, assistant chief of fire prevention for the state Forestry Department’s southern region, which begins south of Sacramento.

The agency brought in air tankers and helicopters weeks before it normally would and has added seasonal staff ahead of the customary schedule.

The U.S. Forest Service in Southern California, likewise, has geared up a month early. Conditions are not so worrisome in Northern California, where winter rainfall levels were closer to normal.

Drought elsewhere in the West presents another potential complication. Should a number of major wildfires break out simultaneously across the Southwest, firefighting resources could be spread thin, leaving fewer crews to respond to the early stages of a blaze in any one region.

Even with its tinder-dry landscape, Southern California could escape a bad fire season this year if weather and people are cooperative. “Who knows?” Pimlott said. “We could have some monsoonal weather and summer rain.”

People are the other big variable. The vast majority of wildfires fought by the state Department of Forestry are caused by man. Most are accidental, but arson accounts for 10% to 12%. About half the fires in national forests are caused by man, the other half by nature, often lightning in the northern sectors of the state.

As development pushes ever farther out, there are more and more homes on the wild land fringes, which makes the job tougher for Pimlott and his firefighting colleagues.

Near the spot where he pulled off the tip of the chamise bush, shopping centers and housing for about 15,000 people will be built within a few years--right on the edge of the scrub-covered Cleveland forest. A few miles away is a 10-year-old development plopped between the forest and another preserve.

“A lot of these people just don’t understand, or are not aware of the fire problem,” Pimlott said.

County and local ordinances have helped force awareness in the Southland’s newer developments, which are required to plant fire-resistant buffers and use fire-resistant roofing.

Called “defensible zones” by firefighters, such buffers are a prime reason million-dollar houses escaped damage from an 1,100-acre suspected arson blaze near Rancho Santa Margarita in south Orange County last week .

“It moved very fast and threatened a tremendous number of homes in a relatively short period,” said Steve Miller, a spokesman for the Orange County Fire Authority.

In light of this year’s fire-friendly conditions, he said, his agency is planning a major education campaign in coming weeks to urge homeowners to clean up dead and highly flammable vegetation.

“We recommend 100 feet of clearance,” he said. “That includes any combustibles you may have up against your home, like sheds or firewood.”

The message will be spread, Miller added, through media campaigns, public service announcements, seminars and newspaper ads. The department also is stepping up inspections in high-risk areas.

Too often, said Smith of the state Forestry Department, residents of outlying areas are blase about fire risk. “People become reliant on the fire department being there for them. They need to be looking at what they can do for themselves.”

That means not just maintaining a fire-resistant buffer, but also preparing to flee in an instant.

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Preparing to Flee at a Moment’s Notice

“If people are in a high-hazard area, they should consider what to do with pets if there’s a fire,” Smith said. “Do they have a suitcase available to grab and run with? They have to be ready to move in a moment’s notice.”

Fire is always a part of the California landscape. Even in the mildest of fire seasons, tens of thousands of acres of wild lands burn across the state. And when the rains are plentiful, grasses grow thick and tall--leaving that much more to burn as they dry out over the course of the summer.

The extremes of the state’s normal weather cycle--torrential winter rains followed by withering summer heat and dryness--mean that every California fire season has nasty potential.

After years of working for the state Forestry Department, public information officer Karen Terrill put it this way: “This state was designed to burn.”

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For a Safer Fire Season

* Remove branches within 10 feet of chimney, and dead branches overhanging roof.

* Remove dead leaves, needles from roof and gutters.

* Install fire-resistant roof; contact fire department for current requirements.

* Cover chimney outlet and stovepipe with nonflammable screen of half-inch or smaller mesh.

LANDSCAPE

* Create a “defensible” space by removing flammable vegetation at least 30 feet from all structures.

* Before pruning near power lines, call utility company.

* Landscape with fire-resistant plants.

* On slopes or in high fire hazard areas, remove flammable vegetation out to 100 feet or more.

* Space native trees and shrubs at least 10 feet apart.

* For trees taller than 18 feet, remove lower branches within six feet of the ground.

* Before planting trees close to any power line, contact utility company.

YARD

* Stack wood at least 30 feet from structures; remove vegetation within 10 feet of wood pile.

* Locate butane and propane tanks at least 30 feet from structures; maintain 10 feet of clearance.

* Contact fire department to see if open burning is allowed in your area, and if permit is required.

* Where burn barrels are allowed, clear flammable materials at least 10 feet around barrel; cover open top with nonflammable mesh screen.

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Source: California Department of Forestry and Fire Protection

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Times staff writers David Haldane and Holly Wolcott contributed to this report.