Wind Is Wild Card in Upper Ojai Fire

OJAI —  The flames that blackened about 3,500 acres in little more than a day may also keep hundreds of firefighters out on the line over Christmas.

The wild card is the wind; with weather forecasts calling for more Santa Anas this morning, about 1,100 firefighters could be spending their holiday hacking out firebreaks, slogging through hot ash on steep hillsides and hoping for an end to gusts so strong they moved the fire a mile in just 15 minutes.

For residents in the lightly populated region just outside Ojai, it could be an anxious Christmas. By Wednesday evening, only one home had been destroyed but many more will be in harm’s way if winds turn and lash the flames closer to town, fire officials said.

Preparing for the possibility of further damage, Ventura County Sheriff Bob Brooks on Wednesday designated the county a local disaster area--a step required for fire victims to receive state aid.

Wednesday night, winds had died down and temperatures were dropping into the low 40s. By 10 p.m., some firefighters were drinking hot soup and preparing to bundle up in sleeping bags. They hoped to get a few hours rest before winds picked up and forced them back to the fire lines.

Some firefighters had been working nonstop since shortly after the blaze broke out in a brushy area of Upper Ojai just before 8 p.m. Tuesday.

Kevin Wallace, a strike team leader from the Montecito Fire Department, took a lunch break Wednesday at the Soule Park command post. It was his first break since arriving the previous night.

“The embers were blowing like hail--red-hot hail,” he said. “You’d get some in the nose, some in the eyes--it was extremely tough.”

Wallace had seen towering flames and felt the hot blast of the Santa Anas. He started talking about the prospect of Christmas with his family, but changed direction as swiftly as the wind: “I’m deceiving myself.”

Firefighters from all over California converged on the blaze--engines from San Diego to San Luis Obispo. Some had come straight from a smaller blaze near the Rincon that started about 1 a.m. Wednesday. That fire burned 250 acres, including an avocado orchard. The blaze was 95% contained at 5 p.m. Wednesday.

Even so, it was frightening for Rincon residents awakened by the smell of smoke in the middle of the night.

“The vision I saw when I woke up was apocalyptic,” Tony DiIoia said. “Flames were taking up whole hillsides, embers were flying and smoke was coming toward me.”

He took his family to a motel and returned Wednesday morning to find his home untouched.

Meanwhile, the blaze near Ojai--officials dubbed it the Ranch fire--proved more difficult to fight. More than 60% of the burned acreage was within Los Padres National Forest and brush in the area hadn’t been soaked by significant rainfall since April 11. Conditions were so dry that Ventura County officials extended the fire season beyond its customary Nov. 15 end.

And the terrain was so rugged that firefighters had to move through at an achingly slow pace.

“You’d literally have to climb up on your hands and knees,” said Joe Luna, a Ventura County Fire Department spokesman.

On the other hand, Luna said, most homeowners had been diligent about keeping the area surrounding their homes free of dry grasses and weeds.

An evacuation center set up at Nordhoff High School took in about 35 people Tuesday night. Many more chose to stick by their homes, hosing them down occasionally and packing the car--just in case.

On Reeves Road on Wednesday afternoon, neighbors watched anxiously as helicopter after helicopter attacked the oncoming flames with tanks full of water scooped from Lake Casitas.

With tears in her eyes, one resident said she wasn’t going anywhere.

“I can’t,” she said. “This is my home. I can’t leave.”

Some might not have a choice.

The National Weather Service measured winds of 35 mph Wednesday night and forecast gusts up to 30 mph through Friday. That’s not as fierce as the 70-mph winds that whipped the blaze after it started Tuesday night, but it won’t make things any easier for fatigued firefighters.

“It’s been an all-nighter,” Ventura County Fire Capt. Lowell Edgar said. “It’ll probably be an all-dayer and then an all-nighter too.”

Times staff writers Tina Dirmann, Anna Gorman and Tracy Wilson contributed to this story.

HOMES THREATENED

Firefighters beat back a fire that threatened million-dollar hillside homes in Glendale and La Canada Flintridge. A1