U. S. Forest Service Won’t Reseed Area Burned by Wildfire

FILLMORE —  With time and the regenerative forces of nature on their side, U.S. Forest Service officials have concluded that there is no point in reseeding any of the 10,425 acres burned in the fire that raged from Fillmore to Santa Paula earlier this month.

The agency has approved spending only $25,000 on rehabilitation efforts, which will be concentrated on restoring the area where firefighters were forced to gouge a crude two-mile road through Los Padres National Forest and up San Cayetano Mountain to fight the Grand fire.

Although fear remains that during heavy rains, fire debris will clog the 14 streams and smaller watersheds that flow out of the burned area--causing flooding and mudslides next winter--officials have opted, at least for now, for a low-key, hands-off approach to restoring the damage.

“We like it to come back as naturally as possible,” said Bob Blecker, a Forest Service hydrologist who is leading the multi-agency rehabilitation team, which also includes members from county fire and flood control, the California Department of Forestry and the Natural Resource Conservation Service.

Typically, there is not that luxury with wildfires; they generally strike in the hot, windy days of autumn, stripping hillsides just before the onset of rainy season. Without the vegetation that stops erosion and absorbs water, rehabilitation teams usually have to work fast to prevent flooding and mudslides.

But the Grand fire, which began April 28 and burned through May 2, happened early enough so that the foggy mornings of spring and leftover root moisture should cause the singed chaparral to soon resprout on its own, officials said. And a light spring rain like the one that fell Thursday on Ventura County may not measure up to much, but will help fire-damaged plants flourish.

“It’ll be green growth coming up in the next few weeks,” said John Weikel, an engineer with the Ventura County Flood Control District. “The biologists feel certain of that.”

Reseeding could hamper the return of native plants, which usually rebound after a fire clears out the dense chaparral. Furthermore, dropping seeds on the steep slopes of San Cayetano Mountain--even from the air--would be a losing battle with the force of gravity.

“The seeds would probably just slide to the bottom of the hill,” Weikel said.

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But bags of seed will be made available at fire stations for residents who feel threatened by their proximity to burned areas, Weikel said.

There are several homes off Grand Avenue, near where the fire started, that could be jeopardized by flooding and landslides, officials said.

But until they have studied the situation further and seen how the chaparral rebounds, flood control officials are holding off on preventive measures until closer to rainy season.

“We’ll do our best to identify these locations and have public meetings and knock on doors,” Weikel said.

Grand Avenue itself is often a flood hazard when heavy rains swell the mountain creeks. Already, there are deep drainage ditches dug on both shoulders.

“We’re looking at that ditch,” Blecker said. “It might fill up with sediment and water and go over the road. We’re looking to see how the homes and orchards along there might be affected.”

Possible solutions could include installing debris traps in the creeks that come off the mountain. Blecker said he has counted about 14 streams, including four decent-sized watersheds: Boulder Creek, Timber Canyon, Snow Canyon and Orca Canyon.

The rehabilitation team could also dig out sediment basins, which are basically bowls in the side of a river, to catch some of the dirt, rocks and other fallout from the burned areas. Blecker said it is important to keep as much sediment as possible out of Sespe Creek and the Santa Clara River, where it could harm steelhead and other fish.

“It clogs their gills or breathing apparatus,” he said.

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Blecker said the fire has revealed many old landslide sites on the slopes of the mountain, all of which are more vulnerable to further movement now that they are barren. But officials agreed that there is no fear of landslides on the scale of the one that hit La Conchita in early 1995.

“Up here, it is a little bit different,” Weikel said. “I don’t expect a huge block to move. I think there will be wider-scale, more scattered locations.”

Weikel said that while airborne in a helicopter earlier this week, he spotted a number of areas where the ground is already crumbling. Stopping the mountain from moving is practically impossible, he said.

“You can’t repeal the law of gravity,” he said. “But oftentimes we are just in a panic to just scramble around and grasp at straws, but I think [in this case] we have enough time to go about doing what we can.”

The total damage from the Grand fire is still untallied. About $1.5 million was spent on suppression efforts, which involved 2,000 personnel from as far away as Montana. There is another $250,000 in damage to private residences, ranches and orchards, county fire spokesman O. J. Hunt said. But that number is expected to rise sharply after June 1, the date the department has given residents to submit damage reports.