The La Brea fire 26 miles east of Santa Maria, California could be another one of those weeks-long, or months-long campaign fires that the Los Padres National Forest has become very familiar with recently. It started at 2:45 p.m. on Saturday and grew from 150 to 1,200 acres in three hours. The last reported size was 1,300 acres.
(UPDATE AT 1:30 p.m. PT: air attack estimated it at approximately 10,000 acres)
(UPDATE, January 4, 2010; the fire was contained on August 22 after burning 89,000 acres.)
The factors that will make this fire difficult to control include:
- Heavy fuel loading that has not burned since the 1966 Wellman fire; (UPDATE @ 4:00 p.m. PT 8-9-2009: part of the fire is burning in the footprint of the 2,026 acre Bald fire, which was one of the fires in the San Rafael Complex in July, 2006)
- Few places for crews to work safely;
- Part of the fire is in the San Rafael wilderness area, which means there may be restrictions on what suppression equipment can be used;
- No nearby water sources for helicopters;
- Long-range spotting was occurring on Saturday and may continue;
- The “growth potential” and “terrain difficulty” are both rated “extreme” on the InciWeb report;
- Some of the engines in the initial response were released yesterday since there was no place for them to work on this very remote fire;
- The weather forecast for Sunday and Monday predicts high temperatures in the low 90s, relative humidity in the high teens, with variable winds.
The fire was very active Saturday night and made some major runs. Fire behavior will most likely increase on Sunday due to lower humidities and higher temperatures.
Eight air tankers worked the fire on Saturday and they were scheduled to be ready to launch again Sunday morning at 8 a.m. Pincha-Tulley’s Type 1 incident management team has been ordered.
Some of the radio traffic has been available HERE.
A video report from KSBY:
