California Coast & Ocean

"What has changed today is not the size or intensity of fires, but rather the size and distribution of the human population in the region," Keeley told the Subcommitee on the Interior, Environment and Related Agencies of the U.S. Senate Committee on Appropriations on November 27, 2007. "Since nearly all of our fires are started directly or indirectly by people, there is reason to believe that we can have a real impact through more focused attention on fire prevention strategies."

Fire ecologists have come to see Santa Ana fires as natural disasters akin to earthquakes or 100-year floods. Governments do not do battle with earthquakes or floods, they mitigate their potential damage using zoning, building codes, and other tools.

Hawkins and other fire professionals already understand this. They see wind-driven fires as unstoppable forces of nature, like earthquakes. Yet the public expects firefighters to crush wildfires using air tankers, helicopters, and, in firefighter parlance, other "heavy metal."

"The news media and elected officials fail to recognize that no number of aircraft can possibly put out a wind-driven fire; it's never been done, it never will be. It's not even safe for the aircraft to be up there," said Hawkins. "It's pretty maddening. It's the top frustration for myself and most fire generals as we retire, that we were not able in our careers to get the news media and elected officials to believe us."

However, because most wildfires on California's southern coast are caused by people, people can also prevent them from happening. "For the guys on the fire engines, the helicopters, the aircraft, and so on, they don't live for fire prevention, they live to put them out once they start," said Hawkins. But planners, developers, homeowners, and every citizen passing through dry flammable lands can play a role in protecting this native ecosystem.

Preventive measures include: burying power distribution lines as part of routine maintenance; investing in stronger investigation and law enforcement programs to prevent arson; doing more to educate people about the dangers of cigarettes, sparks from heavy machinery, and unattended campfires; and cutting fire breaks, building cinderblock walls, or spraying fire retardant along the shoulders of highways and county roads.

Most important, land use practices need to change to minimize the movement of development into wildlands, or at least to build more safely.

Building in Firetraps
"I'll tell people straight out, ‘I'm the antichrist of the American dream,'" Hawkins said. "I'm a fire chief that doesn't believe anybody should live on their own five acres, that we should live like the Indians did, all tightly compacted into a village surrounded by an unburnable belt of green vegetation, so the fires can just burn around us."

Americans jealously guard their freedom to build wherever they want--even if it's in a natural pathway for fire. Building in passes or saddles is dangerous because air speeds up as it is squeezed through them. Houses that sit directly above a canyon are especially vulnerable.

"You get this venturi effect," said Halsey, who has trained as a volunteer firefighter. "Wind flying over the mountain creates a low pressure zone, pulling all the heat, embers, and what-not right up the canyon and through the saddle."

Firefighters watch in dismay and disbelief as homes rise up again over the charred footprints of those that have burned. The 2006 Esperanza Fire, started by an arsonist and spread by Santa Ana winds, took the lives of five U.S. Forest Service firefighters who were trying to save a house that was on top of a canyon.

"We're the land of the free, so build where you want to build," said Halsey. "On the other hand, don't expect firefighters to risk their lives because of your stupidity."