By Joe Nelson
San Bernardino County Sun
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All Rights Reserved
SAN BERNARDINO COUNTY, Calif. — Dire predictions of a busy wildfire season - fueled by what some say has been the driest winter on record - have fire officials primed and ready with bolstered staffing and refresher training.
Wildfires on Catalina Island and in Griffith Park in Los Angeles this month forced Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger to issue an executive order directing the California Department of Forestry and Fire Protection to staff additional fire crews, equipment and aviation resources as needed statewide. It showed firefighters what they can expect.
“The fire reactivity has been burning like it’s late summer, and it’s only going to get worse,” said Peter Brierty, county fire marshal and assistant fire chief. “We are paying full attention to it. It’s not like we’ll ramp it up in July or August.”
The U.S. Forest Service had its normal seasonal staffing in San Bernardino County over the Memorial Day weekend, with 25 engines comprising 346 personnel and three air tankers, two helitankers and three helicopters at its disposal, said spokesman John Miller.
Another crew will be on call this year to respond, if needed, to the Front Country Ranger area including the communities of Forest Falls, Angelus Oaks, Barton Flats, Mountain Home Village and parts of the San Gorgonio Wilderness, he said.
The state fire agency has also hired an additional 24 seasonal firefighters in the past month, filling all vacancies. A water-dropping helicopter at the Prado base in Chino and another helicopter and at least one air tanker housed in Hemet are also available to the agency, CDF spokesman Bill Peters said.
County firefighters are also getting reinforcements, with staffing bumped up in Fawnskin, Wrightwood, Phelan, Pinion Hills, Lucerne Valley, San Antonio Heights, Grand Terrace, Mentone and Joshua Tree, Brierty said.
“It will be between three and four (firefighters) per station,” he said.
And on weekends and holidays, the communities of Forest Falls, Angelus Oaks and Lytle Creek will also get more firefighters, he said.
The county has coordinated efforts to get heavy earth-moving equipment deployed to fires quicker, and sheriff’s helicopters have been retrofitted for water drops.
Firefighters from all three agencies have recently undergone extensive wildfire refresher training to prepare them for what’s expected.
A DC-10 also remains on standby in Victorville, an effective albeit costly tool for the most extreme situations. It holds up to 12,000 gallons of flame retardant, about 10 times what the average tanker can hold.
A report released this month by the National Interagency Fire Center in Boise, Idaho, predicted significant fire potential from May through August due to tinder-dry fuels caused by low snowpack and warmer- than-average temperatures. Virtually the entire state of California has received below-average rainfall since October, with the exception of the northwestern tip. The lower third of California received less than 50 percent of average rainfall this winter.
A severe January freeze caused a lot of vegetation to die off, especially in San Diego, Ventura and Orange counties, prompting a concern about the potential for large fires in those areas. Drought stress and bark- beetle-ravaged timber in the San Bernardino Mountains and elsewhere in Southern California has added to the concerns, according to the report.
Mountain residents have been working with fire officials and other authorities, doing what they can to create defensible space around their homes and rid their properties of dead or dying brush and trees.
In Bear Bear Lake and Wrightwood, residents can have their green waste mulched in wood chippers and hauled away in trucks. The efforts have so far led to the disposal of about 200 tons of dead brush and trees in both cities, Brierty said.
Such efforts are also underway in Angelus Oaks.
“We’re getting our local residents to cut back on their brush, and are supplying them once a month with Dumpsters in cooperation with the Fire Marshal’s Office and county fire,” said Norm Cione, chairman of the Angelus Oaks Fire Safe Council.
But it’s nothing new for the prudent residents in this community.
“We’ve been doing this two years now, and this is our third year. We’ve done multiple tons,” Cione said.
Property owners wishing to participate in the county’s tree-abatement program have until June 30 to get dead or diseased trees marked for removal. For more information, call (909) 867-1240.
“We want every person living, working or playing on the mountaintop to be our lookouts ... and do their part to reduce the danger of a catastrophic wildland fire,” county Fire Chief Pat Dennen said.
Forest Falls resident Natalie Nelson is not too worried about the lack of fire service, but she wonders if the sheriff’s deputy assigned to patrol her community will be able to evacuate residents in a timely manner if a wildfire races through the canyon or over one of the steep ridges towering above her town.
She said she hasn’t seen resident deputy Shannon Kovich in months.
“I would feel more comfortable if our sheriff situation was a little bit better,” said Nelson, 38.
Capt. Bart Gray of the sheriff’s Yucaipa station, which has jurisdiction over Forest Falls, said Kovich remains the resident deputy there and of the lower mountain communities of Angelus Oaks, Mountain Home Village and Barton Flats, but in the past couple of months has been assigned to patrol primarily in Yucaipa.
Kovich is on vacation now, and other deputies are assigned to patrol those communities. But they also must patrol the surrounding cities of Yucaipa, Oak Glen and Mentone. It’s a territory spanning 225 square miles, Gray said.
Yet response times should not be a concern for residents. The average response time for deputies from Yucaipa to Forest Falls is about six minutes, sheriff’s spokeswoman Cindy Beavers said.
Foresters have already cleared hundreds of dead or diseased trees on about 1,000 acres of steep ridgeline above Forest Falls, said Gabe Garcia, district ranger for the Front Country Ranger District.
“We have about 26 acres left to do closer to the road, dispersed throughout the canyon near the forest,” he said.
A 300-foot buffer has been cut along the southern edge of Forest Falls, said Randy Strickland, head of fuels reduction for the Front Country Ranger District.
But it doesn’t mean the area is fireproof.
“If you get a high Santa Ana wind, which is uncommon in that area, no matter where you’re at, there’s very little that can be done,” Garcia said.