Fires are ‘new reality’ in California
Blazes at Christmas may become a normal affair, warns governor
FALLBROOK: A week of destructive fires in Southern California is ending but danger still looms.
Well into what’s considered the wet season, there’s been nary a drop of rain. That’s good for sun-seeking tourists, but could spell more disaster for a region that emerged this spring from a yearslong drought and now has firefighters on edge because of parched conditions and no end in sight to the typical fire season.
“This is the new normal,” Gov Jerry Brown warned on Saturday after surveying damage from the deadly Ventura County fire that has caused the most destruction and continued burning out of control.
“We’re about ready to have firefighting at Christmas. This is very odd and unusual.”
Even as firefighters made progress containing six major wildfires from Santa Barbara to San Diego County and most evacuees were allowed to return home, predicted gusts of up to 80 kph through yesterday posed a threat of flaring up existing blazes or spreading new ones.
High fire risk is expected to last into January and the governor and experts said climate change is making it a year-round threat.
Overall, the fires have destroyed nearly 800 homes and other build- ings, killed dozens of horses and forced more than 200,000 people to flee flames that have burned over 700 sq km since Monday.
One death, so far, a 70-year-old woman who crashed her car on an evacuation route, is attributed to the fire in Santa Paula, a small city next to Ventura where the fire began.
The Ventura blaze continued to burn into rugged mountains in the Los Padres National Forest near the little town of Ojai and toward a preserve established for endangered California condors.
While many evacuation orders were lifted, new ones were established as the fire grew.
Brown said he witnessed the “vagaries of the wind” that had destroyed some houses and left others standing and expressed concern for those who lost everything.
“What can you say?” he asked. “When you lose your house and your belongings and people lose their animals, it is a horror and it’s a horror we want to minimise.”
Firefighters were on high alert for dangerous fire potential even before the first blazes broke out. On Dec 1, they began planning for extreme winds forecast in the week ahead.
Ken Pimlott, chief of the California Department of Forestry and Fire Protection, said authorities were prepared for destruction on the level of 2003 and 2007 firestorms in Southern California and possibly those in Northern California that killed 44 people and destroyed nearly 9,000 homes in October.
But when flames met ferocious winds, crews were largely powerless to stop them. Even fire-attacking aircraft were helpless while being grounded at times because of night, high winds or smoke. —