Santa Fe New Mexican

December wildfires may be new normal

- By Elliot Spagat and Brian Melley

FALLBROOK, Calif. — 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 it 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 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 50 mph through Sunday 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 buildings, killed dozens of horses and forced more than 200,000 people to flee flames that have burned over 270 square miles 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 had 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 minimize.”

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 and other buildings in October.

By Monday, officials had brought in fire crews from the northern part of the state as reinforcem­ents and marshaled engines, bulldozers and aircraft.

On Tuesday they brought in more helicopter­s from the National Guard and “every last plane we could find in the nation,” said Thom Porter, southern chief of the California Department of Forestry and Fire Protection.

The military provided C-130 planes for firefighti­ng, said Mark Ghilarducc­i, director of the California Office of Emergency Services. More than 290 fire engines came from Montana, Utah, New Mexico, Idaho, Arizona, Oregon and Nevada.

 ?? NOAH BERGER/THE ASSOCIATED PRESS ?? Firefighte­rs try Saturday to keep a wildfire from jumping Santa Ana Road near Ventura, Calif.
NOAH BERGER/THE ASSOCIATED PRESS Firefighte­rs try Saturday to keep a wildfire from jumping Santa Ana Road near Ventura, Calif.

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