Memo Predicted Southern California Wildfires
CDF: California Is Not Out Of The Woods Yet
POSTED: 4:14 p.m. PST November 13, 2003
UPDATED: 4:28 p.m. PST November 13, 2003
Story by The KCRA Channel
SACRAMENTO, Calif. -- When describing the blazes that torched Southern California this year, fire officials use words like "unprecedented" and "catastrophic." More than 3,500 homes burned, and 22 people lost their lives.
 In a California Department of Forestry memo -- a document obtained by KCRA 3 -- CDF officials predicted the disaster and accurately described what kinds of hazards firefighters would face, saying, "San Bernardino, Riverside and San Diego" counties had "serious fuel conditions" and "potential for catastrophic fires." The Lake Arrowhead area was named in particular. The memo goes on to predict that the devastating fires would be complicated by limited "routes for public evacuation and firefighter access." The memo was written in July of 2003 -- three months before the fires broke out.
"It wasn't a matter of if, it was a matter of when it was going to occur," said CDF Deputy Director, Fire Protection, Rich Green.
Fire forecasters said a healthy forest is one where there are about 40 trees per acre. In the burned areas, there were 10 times that number of trees.
The memo goes on to say: "There is a 100 percent probability of crown fires occurring in dead standing trees." The conditions were called "explosive and extremely dangerous for firefighters." And "rapidly spreading wildfire may result in many structures burning simultaneously. Structure protection may not be possible."
"All the ingredients were there this year," Green said.
After pinpointing fire dangers late this summer, CDF said it did go in to certain areas to prevent a major blaze, but the area targeted -- some 400,000 acres -- was just too large to completely clear out. And because of a limited budget, crews concentrated on clearing areas designed for evacuation routes, according to Green.
"A lot of the effort was for safety zones -- areas where people could go into central areas for safety zones, just for access to get to those safety zones and off the mountain," Green said.
Green said the state is not out of the woods yet as far as possible large fires next year. "I don't think the any firefighter in the state of California or anywhere in the U.S. has seen conditions that exist in Southern California right now and continue to exist," Green said.
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