The Wildfires of May

Fire is a fact of life in Orange County, especially in newer communities that extend suburbia to the borders of wild lands. The perilous conditions ought to prompt all in fire-prone areas to higher levels of awareness and precaution. The early arrival of smoke billowing in the skies is an ominous reminder of the need to take steps to brace for an extended season.

Residents of Rancho Santa Margarita and Coto de Caza had alarming first-hand experience with this year’s early fire season on a Monday afternoon earlier this month. High temperatures and breezy conditions on May 13 produced a number of fires throughout the region and led to the evacuation of dozens of homes in Orange County. Some 200 houses in the Wagon Wheel section near Coto were briefly threatened.

There is nothing like the real thing to lend urgency to the periodic warnings from fire authorities to homeowners in subdivisions near fire areas about clearing vegetation and installing fire-retardant roofing.

The fire season, which customarily starts in June, has begun in earnest early this year. One of the driest winters on record has left the region parched. Some fire experts are saying that last year’s fire season never really concluded.

If that’s true, then the county simply has been lucky that conditions between the regular end of the previous season and the start of a new one have been sufficiently quiet to avoid even more damaging fires.

The fires of May 13 made it clear that the lucky streak cannot continue indefinitely in a place where fire is part of the cycle of nature. Even the rainy times produce overgrowth that at some future date will become tinder dry, renewing the fire hazard.

During the fire earlier this month, lessons from previous blazes in Orange County apparently were well learned. This is a tribute to the efforts of fire authorities in prior years to educate homeowners, and to the seriousness with which the homeowners took those suggestions. In the aftermath of the Laguna Beach fires nearly a decade ago, much was said about the need for fire-retardant roofs, and in the newer suburbs, for creating sufficient clear areas near homes.

After the early May fires, fire officials praised the homeowners in Coto for creating clearance to 100 feet from structures, as had been recommended. The fire came perilously close to houses, and so it is easy to see that 100 feet can be the difference between losing a home and keeping one.

Credit the Orange County Fire Authority with its resolve to continue its good public education work. It plans a major campaign in coming weeks to get homeowners to create these clear zones. That applies not just to removing vegetation, but also to clearing any kind of combustible, such as firewood, from around houses.

Southern Californians often are said to take warnings too lightly, or to expect that somehow the fire department will come to the rescue. But for those who live close to the suburban edge, the fires of May show that there is no substitute for readiness on the part of the homeowner.