REGION: Santa Ana season lurks around corner
By DAVE DOWNEY North County Times | Posted: Friday, October 14, 2011 8:00 pmAnother Santa Ana season is upon us, that spooky time of year when hot and dry "devil" winds rip through Southern California canyons and threaten to turn tiny sparks into giant infernos.
Technically, the fire season already is several months old. But the worst is always saved for last: The chance that a wildfire will roar out of control is greatest, by far, in autumn.
It's all because of those ferocious Santa Ana winds.
They were the driving force behind the Witch Creek fire that torched 200,000 acres in North San Diego County in 2007. They fanned the arson-caused Esperanza fire that killed five firefighters in Riverside County in 2006. They triggered the massive firestorm that consumed three-quarters of a million acres throughout Southern California in 2003.
Whether a wildfire will get away from firefighters this fall, no one knows, said Bill Patzert, a climate scientist at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena.
"It's always a race between whether the rains come first or the Santa Anas come first," Patzert said in a telephone interview this week.
And by the way, that early October storm didn't count, Patzert said. Sure, the rainfall that approached an inch in many places helped to dampen and breathe new life into the parched native vegetation. But this week's heat wave sapped just about every drop of moisture the storm brought, he said.
Indeed, said Carlton Joseph, forest fire management officer for the Cleveland National Forest, moisture levels in the chaparral and other plants of the 460,0000-acre forest that sprawls across San Diego, Riverside and Orange counties are back to what they were before the storm's arrival.
Thanks to a wet winter, the plants are in slightly better condition than they were during the recent drought, Joseph said.
But that's not saying much. The vegetation has been drying out all summer long. Joseph said the plants are about as dry as they normally are going into the second half of October ---- with barely enough moisture to stay alive.
And now the Santa Ana winds are about to arrive ---- and make things worse.
It's enough to cause a lot of heartache for fire officials across the region.
"I'm always worried about it," said Battalion Chief Travis Alexander, commander of the air attack base operated by the state Department of Forestry and Fire Protection, or CalFire, at Hemet-Ryan Airport in southern Riverside County. "It's not over until it's soaking wet."
Patzert said the Santa Ana winds pose such a serious threat because they tend to blow through the region at speeds of up to 70 mph, drying out everything in their path and heating up the air.
He said the past few days of hot weather foreshadowed what is to come. In a weather pattern he termed "Santa Ana lite," there were only moderate breezes. But they were blowing offshore, as is typical in a Santa Ana condition. And it wasn't just hot inland. It also was sizzling at the beach.
Santa Ana winds are not in the immediate forecast. But just around the corner, Patzert said, you can bet that they will begin to blow ---- and blow with a vengeance.
The origin of the name is the subject of some debate.
Some say it comes from Orange County's Santa Ana Canyon, where the autumn winds whistle through at gale-force speeds. Others say the origin has to do with them being referred to as devil winds.
"They play a big role in California culture," Patzert said. "They are often used in literature, music, films."
In fact, the Beach Boys wrote a song about the Santa Anas.
But they also represent one of the most significant natural threats to life and property in Southern California, he said. And they are not to be taken lightly.
"Often when the winds are howling 50 or 60 mph and there's a fire out in the grasslands, there's no way of stopping it," Patzert said. "We're really not equipped to stop it. We have to wait it out. The good news is that they don't last more than three or four days. But, man, they can do a lot of damage in those three or four days."
In October 2007, wind-fanned wildfires incinerated a total of 368,000 acres and destroyed 1,750 homes in San Diego County. And the blazes were blamed for the deaths of 10 people.
There has been much debate in San Diego County in the years since about whether its firefighting agencies are ready for another natural disaster like the one that struck four years ago. And former San Diego Fire Chief Jeff Bowman, who lives in Escondido, said this week that he still believes the area is not ready, really, to handle the challenge of several out-of-control wildfires like those that struck in 2007 and 2003.
"The bottom line is, this region is way understaffed compared to regions in the rest of Southern California," Bowman said.
Bowman and others have been critical of the San Diego area's lack of a regional fire agency.
San Diego County Supervisor Dianne Jacob said things are changing, however.
"We've gone from a fractured network of dozens and dozens of separate agencies with shoestring budgets to a far more unified network with strengthened and more uniform protection," Jacob said. "But we can't be complacent. We have a long way to reach our end goal of a regional joint powers authority."
Howard Windsor, San Diego County Fire Authority chief and San Diego unit chief for CalFire, said half of the 62 fire districts in the county a few years ago have been merged into the new regional agency.
Windsor added that San Diego County has two helicopters, the city of San Diego has two helicopters and San Diego Gas & Electric Co. has two helicopters it bought for construction of the Sunrise Powerlink transmission line that can be pressed into firefighting service, none of which was available a few years ago.
"So, regionally, we have a lot of aviation pop," Windsor said.
Riverside County, which has a regional fire department that contracts with CalFire and serves almost the entire county, also is gearing up for another Santa Ana season. At a media open house Friday, Battalion Chief Alexander said that besides the two retardant-dropping airplanes and one water-dropping helicopter stationed at the Hemet airport, California's busiest firefighting air base, Riverside County officials brought in another air tanker a few days ago.
Alexander said he is bracing for the worst.
"The minute I tell myself it's not as bad as last year, I have let my guard down," he said.
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