Fire Expert Confirms What You Suspect: Eastern Malibu And Topanga Are Ripe For A Huge Fire
Written by 991KBU on September 24, 2020
As fall Santa Ana winds may develop again as early as next Monday … Eastern Malibu … and the Santa Monica Mountains east of Malibu Canyon … are the major fire worry this fall.
That’s the word from L A County fire’s expert on fire behavior … Drew Smith
He was speaking at the city hall internet session …. what to expect in terms of fire behavior.
KBUU asked chief Smith … could we expect another fire as big as the Woolsey Fire of two years ago??
NEWSCART 73012 ANOTHER WOOLSEY
“No … not as big as Woolsey.
“But every year whole year on average we get eight true Santa Ana wind events a year if you go back to €100 with the climatology. Santa Ana winds routinely last three days.
“So when you have a significant fire within the Santa Monica Mountains … the vulnerability if we take a big swath is between the 101 freeway and the 405 freeway everything to the (Pacific) Palisades to Topanga Canyon to (Malibu Creek) state park to Las Virgenes Road down to Malibu Canyon to Pepperdine.
“That’s our biggest pieces of vulnerability to support large fire growth on a high-risk day.
“And those high-risk days are would have a Santa Ana winds.”
Controversy … let’s call it firm disagreement … flared up.
On one side … residents of eastern Malibu … who asked why there have been no prescribed burns to reduce the threat of runaway wild fires.
And on the other side … Georgia Goldfarb.
She is a Malibu resident who has campaigned against prescribed burns.
And she points out that there is a school of scientific thought that says no prescribed burns should ever be set.
The fire department’s Smith says … people were setting fires in the Malibu mountains before Europeans moved in.
NEWSCART 73013 PRESCRIBED
“If you go back to how the Native Americans manage the landscape with prescribed fire. You have several folds behind you. One is Community protection believe it or not and the other one is for grazing for hunting those both sides of the controversy on whether it’s good or bad.
“I’m a believer in it because I believe in what I do as a prescribed fire manager … and a fire behavior manager … has a significant value.”
But Goldberg noted that some experts disagree …. and say the chaparral wilderness is old growth that should not be set aflame intentionally.
The assistant fire chief disagreed with those experts.
NEWSCART 73011 THEY BALANCE
“Depending on who ‘they’ are.
“At the fire department … we believing fuel management and being good stewards of the land…
“So you can have unhealthy type of watershed as well as healthy watershed … we find that balance.”
The pressure is on Calfire and L A County Fire to reduce immediate fire dangers …. and that is running into the firm belief by a small group odf scientists that humans should not ever upset the balance of nature int he chaparral wilderness.
So far …. the no preScribed burns in my backyard side has won.
The loss of 16-hundred houses on Malibu and vicinity two years ago did not outweigh the beliefs at the L A County Board of Supervisors …. where Supervisor Sheila Kuehl’s office agreed with the objections to controlled burns.
A small prescribed burn to eliminate extremely dangerous heavy brush above Big Rock … in eastern Malibu … was eliminated over the fire department’s objections.
