1970 Clampitt Fire Anniversary
When:
Wednesday, 25 September 2019
Where:
Santa Susana Mountains - Los Angeles & Ventura Counties
Description:
The Clampitt fire broke out around 8 a.m. Friday, Sept. 25, near Clampitt Road in the Newhall Pass as a result of downed power lines. In Santa Ana winds clocked at 80 mph, it took less than a day for the fire to make a 20-mile run to the coast, tearing through Porter Ranch, the Simi Hills at Chatsworth, south to the 101 Freeway and on to Malibu Canyon. News reports initially called it the Chatsworth-Malibu Canyon fire because much of the destruction occurred there.
 Burn area of the Clampitt (dark blue) and Wright (light blue) fires. Source: Master's thesis by Anthony D. Shafer, CSUN, May 2012. Click to enlarge. |
By the time the smoke cleared, the Clampitt Fire had scorched 107,103 acres of brush and forest, destroyed 80 structures killed four civilians (source: University of California Division of Agriculture and Natural Resources). It still stands as L.A. County's deadliest wildfire in modern history and was the largest until 2009 when the Station Fire, which claimed the lives of two firemen, passed it in acreage. (Giant fires of indeterminate size in the San Gabriel Mountains in 1896 and 1919 may have been bigger; see Robinson 1977.)
The Clampitt Fire encroached on the historic buildings of Mentryville in Pico Canyon where an inmate camp crew and a single fire engine were on hand to save the barns and corrals while the resident Lagasse family helped keep the flames away from Alex Mentry's 1890s mansion and various outbuildings. Most of the structures made similarly narrow escapes in August 1962 and October 2003 (the Wolcott barn was lost in the 1962 fire).
Meanwhile in Chatsworth, the fire leveled the old movie-set buildings of the Spahn Ranch, where Charles Manson and his "family" had been living in 1968 and 1969.
Source: https://scvhistory.com/gif/galleries/fire092570/
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