Updated Hills for Everyone Wildfire Study Released

The remarkable Hills for Everyone organization, which has done so much to protect and preserve open space, parkland, and wildlife corridors in this area for decades, has provided another great service recently, especially as a major wildfire has blazed through the Porter Ranch area of the foothills of the northern San Fernando Valley.

After the 2008 Freeway Complex fire, which raced through much of Carbon Canyon, especially the Brea portion, Hills for Everyone engaged in a study of wildfire history in the region.  With increasing activity in an era of rapidly growing climate change, the group revised its study and the results were released and reported upon in today's Champion.

Most striking, in the piece by Marianne Napoles, is that fires have exploded by 50% in the last several years compared to nearly a century prior to 2012.  The data goes back to 1914 and the study shows that over 150 blazes were documented (though there may have been more, especially in earlier years, that were not.)

Of these, only two were known to be from natural causes, that is, lightning strikes, with the rest caused by human activity, principally from arson, automobiles, and fireworks.  Most of them, it was noted, were small and easily contained and extinguished.  The most common months for conflagrations were July, September and October (Santa Ana wind conditions being prevalent in the latter two.)

Significantly, two major hot spots for these fires were identified.  One is the 91 Freeway corridor through Santa Ana Canyon, where the narrowness of the passage of the state highway through that area in proximity to wildlands and large numbers of homes built in recent decades is a significant aspect.

The other is Carbon Canyon, where State Route 142 (Carbon Canyon Road) winds through and has become a significant commuter alternative to the 91 and 57 freeways entering Orange County.  There is a wider section with much more housing on the San Bernardino County portion of the Canyon through Chino Hills.  The more sparsely populated area of the Canyon in Orange County through Brea is far more narrow and wildland-adjacent with communities like Olinda Village/Hollydale just outside the narrowest portion.

Finally, the report has many recommendations for improving fire protection for the area of study, including more careful vetting of proposed housing projects; a more robust system for fining violators of codes, ordinances and laws that affect fire safety; a more vigrorous fire watch system of patrols of area prone to greater risk during wildfires; better construction of new houses and improves for older ones pertaining to attic vents, closed eaves and the like; improvements to the highways from which some fires start; and, very importantly, these days, given new power shutoff policies, improvements with power line maintenance.

For more on this important study, here is the link to the Hills for Everyone page.