Firefighting Gives Way to Flood Fear

As firefighters worked on dousing the last embers of the Hopper fire Wednesday, ecologists began weighing the threat of flooding if hard rain hits scorched mountainsides this winter.

A multi-agency Burn Area Emergency Rehabilitation team ran tests on seven spots on one slope and found that water had remained pooled where it was poured for up to 20 minutes before soaking into the ground, said Pat Boss, a U.S. Forest Service spokesman.

That means the 9-day-old, 24,800-acre fire burned so hot in some spots that most rainfall will run straight downhill rather than soak into the hardened earth, Boss said.

Heavy rains would carry rocks, scorched trees and burned branches down the steep hills to creeks and culverts and could clog up and flood the road if unchecked, Boss said.

“And the road up to Piru Lake, that whole entire road where all the culverts are, there’s going to have to be a constant watch during the first two or three months of wintertime,” Boss said.

A few ranches are in the path along Reasoner Canyon and Dominguez Canyon, where rapid runoff could swell creeks to the flood stage, he said.

The threat of landslides and rising creeks concerns cattle rancher William King, 77, who has worked about 10,000 to 15,000 acres of rugged land west and north of Lake Piru for most of his life.

“For one thing, up the canyon above the house, there’s a massive landslide around there that came down around June or May,” he said. “If we get heavy rains on that landslide and water washing off the burn on [it], it could cause some serious damage here. It could bring it down the creeks and make the creeks flood.”

The fire burned about half the ranch, removing grass that will not return until after spring rains, and King said he may have to buy hay to feed his 300 to 400 head of cattle if the cattle finish off the unburned grass.

But King also said the fire helped clear dead brush and freshen the land for the future.

“There’s going to be probably some erosion, and there’ll be more water in the streams,” he said. “But there’ll be more game, there’ll be more grass for the cows, and basically it’s beneficial.”

The land will recover spectacularly, as seeds and burned-off stumps sprout anew, according to Mike Foster, a U.S. Forest Service biologist who heads the rehabilitation team.

The team will be working with the Ventura County Flood District to draft plans for flood-proofing the drainage system in and around the burn area, he said.

“The town of Piru is safe, and probably so is the town of Fillmore,” he said. “It’s more the scattered ranch houses and farmhouses, and the housing project there for migrant workers that we’re worried about.”

Meanwhile, fire commanders by Wednesday evening had released hundreds of the 939 firefighters who had been mopping up hot spots since that morning, leaving 625 by nightfall, he said.

Some of those released included the last of 300 firefighters who had been airlifted to remote camps in Los Padres National Forest to help carve the northern edge of a 35-mile firebreak around the blaze.