Thick columns of smoke rose off the sides of the Santa Ynez Mountains north of Santa Barbara on Thursday as more than 1,000 firefighters entered their second day of battle against the Gap fire.
“This fire could easily spread,” said Bill White as he stood on a ridge high above Goleta and looked east and north toward the burning mountainside.
White, a captain with the Atascadero Fire Department, pointed to all of the dense vegetation that still stood unburned between him and the cities of Goleta and Santa Barbara below. While much of the vegetation is green, White said, it’s extremely flammable because of low fuel-moisture levels.
Though no structures have burned, the Gap fire had burned about 3,000 acres by 10 p.m. Thursday, much of it very steep terrain with thick brush that has not burned in more than a half-century.
Ground crews impossible
The forbidding topography has made it impossible to send ground crews in to fight the fire, said Jamie Copple, a battalion chief with the U.S. Forest Service, as he sat at a table at the Earl Warren Showgrounds in Santa Barbara, where fire authorities have established a command center.
“So far we’ve had to fight this fire mainly from the air,” said Copple as helicopters whirred in the distance.
Two of the helicopters were sent from Ventura County as part of a mutual aid agreement. The choppers are grabbing water from a network of reservoirs in the valleys around the Santa Ynez Mountains.
As with all wildfires in California, the weather will be an important factor in how easily this blaze can be tamed.
While the winds were largely weak and cool on Thursday, hot weather is expected next week, said Dan Ardoin, a division chief with the Vandenberg Air Force Base Fire Department. That could greatly complicate the work of firefighters, Ardoin said.
Authorities would like to establish a containment line around the fire before the hot weather arrives, he said.
But at the same time they are wary of fighting the fire too aggressively, lest they endanger crews on the ground and in the air.
It’s always a balance between fighting a fire aggressively and maintaining the safety of the crews that are out there,” said Ardoin, who’s charged with predicting where the fire will go next. “No building or house is worth sacrificing a life for.”
Homes could be in danger
There are plenty of homes around the citrus orchards that lie between Highway 101 to the south and the Santa Ynez Mountains to the north.
Many of the homeowners living in the area took their horses to the Earl Warren Showgrounds after authorities issued an evacuation order for the area.
The fire comes as hundreds of other wildfires burn across the state.
Said Copple: “We’re stretched super thin when it comes to personnel.”
Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger sent National Guard units on Tuesday to relieve weary firefighters who’ve been working to contain wildfires in the northern part of the state for some two weeks now.
West Coast 911 fire news source – Ventura County Star / read entire article
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