Southern California's Mountain Fire is the Most Destructive In Years. Could it Have Been Much Worse?

Grace Toohey, Sandra McDonald and Sean Greene, Los Angeles Times (TNS)

LOS ANGELES—Six years ago this week, one of the most destructive fires in Southern California history exploded near the Santa Susana Pass.

Over the next three days, the Woolsey fire would forge a devastating path through southeast Ventura County and into the hills of Malibu, burning practically until it met the ocean, stopping next to Pacific Coast Highway. About 1,500 structures were destroyed, almost 100,000 acres were burned and three people were killed.

So when the Mountain fire ignited last week not far from the 2018 footprint for the Woolsey fire—and amid similarly dangerous winds that contribute to extreme fire spread—there was panic that it could balloon to a disaster of similar scale.

And though it ultimately did not, it still burned more than 20,000 acres, destroyed 134 structures, mostly homes, and damaged at least 80 others—becoming the most destructive fire to hit any Southern California community since Woolsey.

But officials are praising the dire fire weather warnings that prepared residents and pre-positioned resources, the quick decision-making to order evacuations and assist residents in that, and the dangerous firefighting done against wind-driven flames. While many homes were lost, everyone made it out alive, Ventura County Fire Chief Dustin Gardner said. A few minor injuries were reported.

“This fire could have been an absolute disaster for our community,” Gardner said. “We suffered loss, but again, we had no fatalities ... I know we suffered great damage, but thousands of homes were saved.”

A Path of Destruction

The Mountain fire ignited amid dangerous red flag conditions that officials warned had the potential to create extremely fast-moving fires. Firefighters first responded around 9 a.m. Wednesday to a large brush fire on South Mountain in the Santa Susana Mountains. With intense offshore winds—reaching hurricane-force speeds at the higher elevations—and extremely dry brush, the blaze spread quickly and, by the afternoon, had ripped through hillside neighborhoods near Camarillo.

Once evacuations were ordered, firefighters and first responders went around to many neighborhoods alerting residents and helped them leave the area.

This fire moved “faster than anything we have seen in years,” Ventura County Sheriff Jim Fryhoff told residents at a community meeting Sunday night.

Since 1986, this area has seen six other major wildfires, with footprints greater than 1,000 acres. Most recently, the 2023 South and 2019 Maria fires burned thousands of acres in the western section of the Mountain fire’s perimeter. In 2003, the 108,000-acre Simi megafire burned in eastern Ventura County, reaching a terminus around South Mountain—where the Mountain fire started.

In November 2019, the Maria fire burned along the Santa Clara River, similarly driven by Santa Ana winds. However, it mostly threatened Santa Paula and didn’t reach more urban enclaves.

This portion of Southern California is particularly susceptible to major fires, because of how intense Santa Ana winds funnel through the region, typically hitting in the fall and winter when the landscape is often at its driest.

Ariel Cohen, the lead meteorologist at the National Weather Service’s Oxnard office, called the area a “favorable corridor” for the dry, offshore wind pattern, which have fueled many of these recent fires.

Typically, fires make an area less prone to another fire soon afterward, since they burn up much of the most flammable fuels, which can take many years to grow back. But when fires burn too large and too frequently, the larger, more resilient foliage struggles to regrow, allowing for quick-growing, invasive grasses to take hold—which easily dry out and turn into kindling.

That cycle was evident this fall, which saw extreme drying after a hot late summer that followed two wet years that facilitated growth.

“This was definitely an area with very high vulnerability,” Cohen said. Consecutive 12-month periods with up to twice the normal amount of precipitation produced a lot of “smaller fuels” in the form of underbrush and grasses, he said, “and that ends up being the foundation for fires to very efficiently spread.”

Could It Have Been Worse?

The Mountain fire could have been a second coming of the 2018 Woolsey fire—or even the the 2017 Thomas fire—but luckily it didn’t pan out that way, said Mark Lorenzen, the Ventura County Fire Department chief from 2012 to 2022.

The Thomas fire, which destroyed over 1,000 structures and burned more than 281,000 acres in Santa Barbara and Ventura counties, also grew under similar circumstances as the Mountain and Woolsey fires: with low humidity, active Santa Ana winds and lots of dry brush in a mixed wildland and urban environment.

“All the conditions were perfect for a fire of this magnitude,” the retired fire chief said. If the windy conditions had persisted longer, Lorenzen thinks this year’s blaze could have rivaled those larger fires.

By Monday, the fire was 36% contained as firefighters continued mopping up hot spots before winds could again pick up this week, authorities said. But the conditions were not expected to be as extreme as Wednesday, when the Santa Ana winds were at their worst since 2020 and much of fire damage occurred in just a few hours.

That morning and afternoon, 60- to 80-mph gusts slammed the foothills around Moorpark and Camarillo. The winds were so fierce that retardant-dropping aircraft were grounded, at least temporarily. At the same time, the demand for water from firefighters was so great that some crews lost water pressure, forcing water to be shuttled up to certain areas. Some firefighters on the ground said this created a challenge, but officials insisted it didn’t hinder operations.

In the weeks and months that followed the Woolsey fire, there was much debate about whether anything could have been done to minimize the extent of the devastation. A Los Angeles Times investigation found that first responders on the front lines of the Woolsey fire struggled during those first critical hours, stymied by communication breakdowns and a scarcity of air tanker support, equipment and firefighters.

But it’s still too early to say if anything should have been handled differently in the Mountain fire, though officials have initially applauded the multi-agency response. Fryhoff did acknowledge that the time of the fire’s ignition—in the morning, in complete daylight—aided in evacuation, communication and firefighting.

“This had the opportunity to be so exponentially worse—in that regard we are very fortunate,” Fryhoff said. “We did not lose any lives that we know of at this point which is unbelievable when you have this amount of devastation.”

(Los Angeles Times staff writer Richard Winton contributed to this report.)

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