Day Done, Firefighters Head Home

After achieving full containment of the 162,700-acre Day fire Monday evening, crews broke camp at the Ventura County Fairgrounds and began making their way home.

Aided by light rain over the area Sunday, firefighters completed a 163-mile line around the blaze by 6 p.m., officials said. The Day fire had become the fifth-largest California wildfire on record.

Though less than 0.12 of an inch of water fell, the cool and moist conditions were a welcome contrast to the dry and hot winds of previous weeks that have made the fire so difficult to control, said Elrand Denson, a U.S. Forest Service spokesman.

“The rain helped tremendously,” Denson said. “It helped us turn the corner.”

A command post at the county fairgrounds will be gone by Wednesday, Denson said. A second operations center at Castaic Lake will remain open while mop-up and assessment of the fire’s damage is done, he said.

More than 2,000 firefighters were still assigned to the fire Monday, mopping up burning embers, removing equipment and building barriers along steep sections of the line to prevent erosion during winter rains.

Seven “hot shot” crews were working the high mountain ridges to ensure that smoldering logs and other hot embers were extinguished, Denson said.

At the monthlong fire’s peak, about 4,800 firefighters from 39 states were on the lines, officials said Monday. The blaze started Sept. 4 -- Labor Day -- and threatened several Ventura County communities as it worked its way across the Sespe Wilderness in the Los Padres National Forest.

Forest service officials say the blaze, which cost just over $70 million to fight, was started by someone burning trash in a remote section of the forest. No one has been arrested.

Hundreds of people in Ojai, Lockwood Valley, Pine Mountain Club and other foothill communities were forced to evacuate their homes and move animals, sometimes twice.

An analysis of the fire’s damage is underway, officials said Monday. The review will determine if fisheries have been damaged by sedimentation and how endangered species, such as the California condor and the arroyo toad, are faring.

Based on what the team finds, a rehabilitation plan will be drawn up and implemented in the months to come, officials said.

Of high concern is the possibility of mudflows into communities below mountains denuded by burning. The Piru watershed, which drains into Piru Lake, may need significant repair to prevent flooding, authorities said.

Before leaving the Ventura County Fairgrounds, many of the firefighters heading home stopped to pick up a souvenir T-shirt commemorating their 28-day battle with the blaze.

“I don’t know what I’m going to do with it,” Denson said about the $15 shirt imprinted “Day Fire 2006.” “I’ve already got three or four of them from other fires at home.”

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catherine.saillant@latimes.com