Fires decimate Malibu; winds, brush blamed

Wednesday, October 23, 1996

FIRE:

The area, replete with dry chaparral, proves to be breeding
ground for tragic wildfiresBy Phillip Carter

Daily Bruin Staff

MALIBU — For local residents and onlookers, the wind-swept
firestorms racing through Las Virgenes Canyon on Monday seemed like
deja vu.

It was three years ago, almost to the day, that wildfires blazed
through the Santa Monica Mountains with the notorious Santa Ana
winds at their backs.

On Monday, the script seemed eerily familiar.

"We were here then, and we watched a lot of the same ground
burn," said Dr. Gary Brown, a Red Cross volunteer driving medical
supplies to a shelter on the other side of the fire. "Except this
time, the winds are blowing a lot harder and they’re going a lot
later ­ that makes it worse."

Gusts reached 70 mph in some places, fanning flames as high as
50 feet into the air and causing the conflagration to leap across
the multi-lane Pacific Coast Highway in several places. Once
across, the fire completed its 20-mile journey from Calabasas by
fizzling on the Malibu shoreline.

"Malibu has a natural, built-in fire break ­ unfortunately,
it’s the Pacific Ocean," said city spokeswoman Sara Maurice.
Indeed, many local fire experts said the coastline was probably the
only part of Malibu not designed by nature to burn.

High winds and dry brush replicated the scene from 1993 almost
to the letter, raising the question of whether Malibu is a natural
hotbed for firestorms.

Specialists in geography and forestry answered that Malibu, with
its dry chaparral brush and north-to-south running canyons, makes
ideal turf for Santa Ana wind-driven flames like those on
Monday.

"That’s why we have the worst fire problems here, and why Orange
County and San Diego don’t have as bad of a problem," said biology
Professor Philip Rundel, an expert in ecosystems.

More than anywhere else, the Las Virgenes/Malibu Canyon provides
a fertile playground for wildfires, with its steep walls and
high-velocity winds. Experts also noted that the population at the
canyon’s northern mouth has been the cause of the last two
flare-ups.

"If you go backwards in the compass direction from this canyon,
you find the potential for a fire because people are there,
cigarettes are there, high tension lines are there, things that
start fires," said Santa Monica College ecologist Walt Sakai.

The swath cut by Monday’s fire began in Calabasas, alongside
Highway 101 where a downed electrical line provided the spark that
would ultimately burn nearly 15,000 acres.

Few observers expressed surprise at the fire’s longevity or
strength.

"If a fire starts on that (Calabasas) side, you have extensive
wildland all the way to the beach, so it’s probably one of the
worst locations for a fire to start," said Bill Selby, a Santa
Monica College professor who studies the local mountain range.
"There’s so much vegetation to burn between the Ventura Freeway and
the beach ­ if the coast wasn’t there the thing would still be
burning."

As home to a chaparral ecosystem, the Malibu area hosts one of
the most combustible types of brush in existence. Chaparral
consists of many small, woody plants that are full of oils and are
extremely flammable. These plants also tend to occur in very dry
climates, and are drought-resistant.

But the vegetation’s most dangerous trait is its tendency to
burn every 15 to 45 years in its own natural reproductive
cycle.

"Most things become combustible under dry conditions ­
(chaparral) ignites easily and burns faster, especially in
conditions of low humidity," said USC Professor Fokion
Egolfopoulos. "It also has to do with the chemical composition (of
the oily plants)."

The plants are adapted to burn periodically in order to
eliminate old growth and begin the regenerative process, experts
said.

"It’s adapted to burn somewhere between 15 and 45 years, and in
cases where they burn regularly, there’s not enough leaflet to
create this huge wall of fire like this and the ones three years
ago," said Jeff Smallwood, a lecturer in UCLA’s biology
department.

However, by building in chaparral areas, Smallwood said that
humans disrupt the natural cycle of these burns ­ sometimes
with disastrous results, as evidenced Monday.

Often, small fires are extinguished in the Malibu hills as soon
as they threaten homes. But preventing the remaining plants from
burning causes large amounts of old, dry brush to build up in
Malibu’s canyons, providing massive quantities of flammable
material.

"That creates very, very hot fires that also move extremely
rapidly," Smallwood said.

Despite the ferocity of these fires, chaparral tends to regrow
rather quickly, in large part due to the good fertilizer provided
by its burnt ancestors. The main problem, as Malibu residents saw
after 1993’s wildfires, comes when rain hits the fire-burnt, naked
hillsides, causing erosion and mudslides.

In Malibu’s chaparral ecosystem, the erosion problem is worsened
by the plants’ chemistry, which leaves an oily residue just beneath
the soil’s surface. The result is that nutrient-rich topsoil slides
off the mountains in mudslides like grease on a frying pan.

"The soil is made water repellent by the fire, because the
hydrocarbons from the local vegetation are driven into the soil
where they condense and create a more or less waterproof layer,"
said UCLA Professor Stanley Trimble, an expert in erosion and
forest growth.

"Sometimes its (result is) just straight erosion, sometimes it
will be mudslides, or sometimes the layer of soil above the
hydrophobic layer will just slide off the hill."

Whether the Malibu hillsides tumble to the sea depends in large
part on this season’s rain, experts said. Should the Southland
receive light or gradual rain this fall and winter, the region may
evade mudslides. But heavy or early rains will almost surely
produce huge mudslides of the sort that virtually shut down Malibu
in 1993 and 1994.

"The timing and the delivery of the rains is very important,"
UCLA Professor Melissa Savage said. "When you get very violent and
severe rain delivery, it can just flood everything."

Whether the rain comes in drops or torrents, it will likely
result in Malibu’s rapid regrowth. Most experts estimated that
within three years, the area would regain much of its
vegetation.

But it seemed unlikely that the cycle of firestorms would
change, Savage said, in large part due to the very people whose
lives were disrupted by the flames.

"Southern California has to face the fact that if it builds on
these hillsides, it’s building in a high-risk, naturally fire-prone
community," she said.

Moreover, the very aesthetics that prompted many homeowners to
build their homes in dense vegetation also made their homes most
susceptible to being burned down.

"There are some exotic plants that have been introduced which
are highly flammable, such as eucalyptus, and people could avoid
(growing) those right next to their house," Savage recommended.

But the most effective strategy for controlling brush fires also
seems to be the most controversial ­ controlled burning of the
countryside.

That method involves purposefully setting fire to large areas of
accumulated brush. Ecologists agreed that it was the most effective
way to prevent the intense firestorms which have plagued the Malibu
area.

But area homeowners have been reticent to support this policy,
and have fought hard against it in the political arena.

Nonetheless, several experts said that controlled burning was
the only way to prevent massive fires and save people’s homes from
being burnt down. Selby cited a recent study done in Baja
California, comparing how Mexican authorities often let small fires
burn themselves out to the American strategy of stomping fires out
immediately.

"The result is that you have these huge areas of wildland where
the fuel builds up over many years and becomes an unnatural sort of
feeder fuel for these fires," said Selby, adding that the resulting
"fires tend to be these disasters that burn literally to the
coast."

In the final analysis, Selby said the only way to prevent large
fires was to burn small ones to remove the built-up fuel. However,
the problem is worsened when people build in those areas which must
be periodically ignited.

"The more we build in the wild areas, the more we have to put
out the fires; the more fires we have to put out, the worse the
fires become in the long run," Selby said. "If we keep building in
a lot of these areas that we know are prone to fires, we’re just
asking for it."