By William M. Welch
USA TODAY
Copyright 2006 Gannett Company, Inc.
All Rights Reserved
LOS ANGELES — Extremely dry brush and fickle winds have kept alive for more than three weeks a wildfire that is only 40% contained and has scorched 200 square miles of mountainous terrain northwest of Los Angeles.
For more than 3,200 firefighters battling the stubborn blaze, no end is in sight.
“We haven’t had rain since the spring,” said Bruce Emmens, a federal fire information officer at Goleta, Calif. “Not only is it dry, but some of the area that is burning hasn’t burned in 70 years, so there’s very old and very thick brush and timber. It makes for intense fire activity.”
Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger declared a state of emergency for Ventura County on Sunday evening, clearing the way for assistance from the governor’s emergency services office and state funds for rebuilding and recovery.
The fire started on Labor Day. It was sparked by someone burning items in the forest, according to the National Interagency Fire Center in Boise.
The fire spread across 15,000 additional acres Saturday, or about 23 more square miles, when dry desert winds blew in from the east, Emmens said. Gusts were clocked as high as 50 mph, but a shift to cooler ocean winds in the afternoon gave firefighters some relief.
Dry Santa Ana winds resumed Sunday but were milder than forecast. “That was the good news we got this morning,” said Paurino Almazan, senior Ventura County sheriff’s deputy. Those desert winds are forecast to resume and pick up speed today, he said.
The fire in the Los Padres National Forest has placed a blanket of smoke across the Ventura County mountains visible to much of Southern California. Fire crews from around the country were battling the blaze with bulldozers and other heavy equipment. In the air, tanker jets and helicopters dropped fire retardant.
The U.S. Forest Service estimated the fire at 40% contained, but crews still had at least 59 miles of fire lines yet to cut in an effort to isolate the fire and allow it to burn itself out. A return of high winds poses the threat that the fire could jump the lines crews are digging, Emmens said.
Hundreds of people have fled. Students at Thomas Aquinas College, a liberal arts college adjacent to the Los Padres forest, evacuated over the weekend as a precaution. The school has 350 students. An additional 650 residents of 300 homes within a few miles of the fire were evacuated to shelters and homes in the nearby towns of Ojai and Santa Paula.
So far only one structure, thought to be a former Forest Service observation tower, has been destroyed, Emmens said.
According to the National Fire Information Center, wildfires have consumed almost 9million acres this year. That exceeds last year’s record of 8.1million acres.