B4 THURSDAY, OCTOBER 31, 2019 LATIMES.COM
WILDFIRES
Brown and then made per-
manent under Gov. Gavin
Newsom, has allocated mil-
lions of dollars to pre-posi-
tion firefighting resources
during severe fire weather.
As a result, on Wednes-
day, after the weather serv-
ice’s extreme fire weather
warning, more firefighters
were prepared to tackle the
fire that bounded toward
the presidential library, a re-
pository of records and arti-
facts from the Reagan ad-
ministration, Ventura
County Fire Chief Mark
Lorenzen said.
There was ample air sup-
port, with helicopters and
fixed-wing aircraft repeat-
edly dropping loads of water
nearby.
The California Depart-
ment of Forestry and Fire
Protection and the Califor-
nia Office of Emergency
Services sent additional
trucks, keeping flames from
homes and the library.
About 800 firefighters
fought the Easy fire, which
began near Easy Street and
Madera Road in Simi Valley
shortly after 6 a.m.
“They worked the flanks
pretty hard, and then they
were incredibly vital when
the fire crossed the 23 [Free-
way],” Lorenzen said of the
air resources. “We had the
DC-10 come in and lay down
retardant along the 23 and
then right in that neighbor-
hood above it, and it gave us
the opportunity to get in
there and knock it down. In
the absence of the aircraft
there, that would have been
a really big challenge for us
to contain that fire.”
This Santa Ana event
was forecast to be unusually
strong and long-lasting, and
weather observations
showed how dangerous the
conditions were. Gusts of up
to 78 mph were recorded on
Boney Peak in the Santa
Monica Mountains; Cama-
rillo recorded 55 mph.
The air was parched dry,
with relative humidity hit-
ting zero atop Mt. Wilson in
the San Gabriel Mountains
and on peaks in the Santa
Ynez Mountains and the Los
Padres National Forest, Na-
tional Weather Service me-
teorologist Lisa Phillips
said.
Vegetation was also ex-
tremely dry. Autumn rains
have been late in Southern
California for each of the last
three fall seasons, a big fac-
tor in the severe fire weather
the region has suffered in re-
cent years.
Drier autumns put Cali-
fornia at risk because that’s
when Santa Ana winds come
sailing out of high-pressure
areas in the deserts of Ne-
vada and Utah and target
low-pressure voids toward
the California coast. As they
come down mountain slopes
and speed through passes,
the intensely dry and fast-
moving winds raise the risk
of critical fire weather in
highly populated areas.
On Wednesday, humidity
levels all over Southern Cali-
fornia were dry even at lower
elevations, with Sinaloa
Lake in Simi Valley getting
as low as 8% and Moorpark,
7%. Humidity of 15% to 20%
is considered quite dry.
The National Weather
Service warned that condi-
tions will remain extreme
through most of Thursday.
The air will continue to be
dry, and although Santa Ana
winds have probably
peaked, they’ll still be
strong, expected to gust be-
tween 40 mph and 60 mph,
said weather service mete-
orologist Kristen Stewart.
It’s possible that red-flag
warnings — a term used to
describe critical fire danger
because of high winds, low
humidity, and dry vegeta-
tion — will be extended for
valley hills and mountains
beyond Thursday after-
noon. Thursday night
through Friday, top winds
will weaken to gusts of 25
mph to 35 mph.
The monster Santa Ana
event is being fueled in part
by intensely cold high pres-sure over the Rocky Moun-
tains.
“There’s actually record
cold air mass right now over
the Rockies and the Great
Basin,” said Daniel Swain,
climate scientist with UCLA
and the National Center for
Atmospheric Research.
In Boulder, Colo., there’s
a foot of snow on the ground
and the temperature is 9 de-
grees — in October.
“This extremely cold air
mass directly from the Arc-
tic is sitting just to the east of
California. And that is obvi-
ously a great contrast with
the not-so-frigid air over
California, and especially asyou get closer to the ocean,”
Swain said. “That thermal
contrast is setting up that
strong pressure contrast,
which is in turn driving these
very strong winds.”
Temperatures along the
California coast are close to
average for this time of year,
but to the state’s east,
they’re well below average —
an extreme difference that’s
driving the winds, Swain
said.
The air mass “dropped
straight down southward
out of the Arctic over the
Rockies because there’s
such a big mass of high pres-
sure over Alaska right now,where they have been expe-
riencing record warmth on a
recurring basis, and where
there is effectively no sea ice
on the Arctic Ocean coast
for the first time in recorded
history in October.”
The warm mass of air
over Alaska, as a result, has
had the effect of placing “a
big blob of cold air over the
Rockies, which is creating
this extreme contrast that’s
generating the winds in Cali-
fornia,” Swain said.
Cold Santa Anas can be
destructive. The Thomas
fire that killed two people
and destroyed more than
1,000 structures in Ventura
and Santa Barbara counties
came during a cool Santa
Ana wind event in 2017.
Colder Santa Ana winds
can in some ways be more
dangerous than warmer
Santa Anas, said climatolo-
gist Bill Patzert, especially if
the high-pressure system
behind them is stationary.
Because the air is so cold,
it’s also very heavy.
“So it accelerates more
rapidly, because it’s so heavy
coming through these
passes — that’s why you’re
getting these extreme wind
speeds,” Patzert said.
One way forecasters pre-
dict Santa Ana winds is to
measure the difference in
pressure between Los Ange-les International Airport
and the community of
Daggett in the San Bernar-
dino County desert.
The record for October,
which sees particularly
flammable vegetation if au-
tumn rains haven’t yet ar-
rived, is negative 10.2 milli-
bars, which occurred Oct. 21
and Oct. 22, 2007. On Oct. 21,
2007, a downed San Diego
Gas & Electric Co. power
line started the Witch fire,
which burned nearly 200,
acres, destroyed more than
1,000 homes, and left two
dead.
The forecast pressure dif-
ference for this extreme red-
flag event was negative 10
millibars. But by Wednesday
night, the difference came in
short of that, reaching nega-
tive 9.3 millibars.
Southern California is ex-
pected to get a break from
Santa Ana conditions next
week, but there is no
outlook for rain over the next
10 days.
Weather conditions have
improved in Northern Cali-
fornia, which has also seen
severe fire weather over the
last week.
Red-flag warnings in the
Bay Area expired Wednes-
day afternoon as winds have
eased, although forecasters
warned that the air is still
quite dry.Strong winds test firefighters’ tactics
A HELICOPTERdrops water on a backfire set in heavy brush along Madera Road in Simi Valley, an attempt to keep the Easy fire from
crossing into Thousand Oaks. Crews had ample air support Wednesday against the fire, Ventura County Fire Chief Mark Lorenzen said.Brian van der BrugLos Angeles TimesJENNIFER PORTER, left, and Trisha Trifunovich
brace themselves against high winds near the fire.Al SeibLos Angeles Times[Firefighters,from B1]
around power lines.
This is not a Gray Davis
calamity in the making. In
truth, there is very little
resemblance between the
two governors’ situations —
so far, anyway.
Davis was recalled in
2003 largely because he
resembled a deer in head-
lights when the Texas power
pirates — Enron, mostly —
began holding back electric-
ity in order to drive up the
kilowatt price. That re-
sulted in brownouts all over
the state and higher profits
for the pirates.
Plus, Davis had other PR
problems that Newsom
doesn’t — a sinking econo-
my that led to budget defi-
cits and his raising the car
tax.
Davis was doomed when
“Terminator” action hero
Arnold Schwarzenegger
jumped into the race for
governor. Voters love to be
entertained.
Newsom is in no immedi-
ate political danger. His poll
numbers aren’t tumbling as
Davis’ did when his energy
crisis hit.
In fact, Newsom’s job
approval ratings could
conceivably climb from
their pre-fires position in
the mid-40% range.
Newsom scored some
invaluable points Tuesday
when PG&E reversed itself
and agreed to the governor’s
request to provide rebates
for customers whose power
was shut off so wildfires
wouldn’t be ignited.
“This is significant be-
cause utilities in the past
have never credited custom-
ers for these disruptions,”
Newsom said. He tweeted
that the rebates are “the
least they can do.”
“He seems to have been
doing a good job,” Republi-
can consultant Rob Stutz-
man says of the Democratic
governor. Stutzman was
Schwarzenegger’s chief
spokesman during the
Davis recall and became his
gubernatorial communica-
tions director.
“Both ends of the state
are on fire and he’s been
showing up in both places.He’s acting like a good
governor should ... saying
the right things, thanking
the president [for federal
aid], staying out of the
way.”
“He really has two cri-
ses,” Stutzman adds. “The
blackouts and the wild-
fires.”
But is there a danger of
a governor showing up at
wildfire scenes too often
and wearing out his wel-
come?
“Not as long as the fires
are burning,” Stutzmansays. “Arnold used to say,
‘Be a man of action!’ Ar-
nold’s instincts were right.
“You only make a mis-
take if you do something in
poor taste. Like when peo-
ple are running from a fire,
you show up in Lakers’
courtside seats. Doing
something like that doesn’t
sit well.”
But Stutzman adds a
caveat: “If power is on and
off for weeks on end, we’re
no longer living in a first-
world nation. I’d be very
alarmed. If this happensnext year and the year after,
that’s when people decide
it’s absurd.”
I called Garry South,
who was Davis’ chief strate-
gist when he was elected
and when he was recalled.
“I think he’s doing well,”
South says of Newsom.
“More than that, he’s doing
the best he can possibly
do.... He’s doing a pretty
good job of pointing out who
the real villain is. And that’s
PG&E.
“How can we allow a
public utility to essentiallysay, ‘The only way we can
stop ourselves from burning
down your house is to shut
off the power to your house’?
I mean....”
But South thinks the
dual dilemma of blackouts
and wildfires makes New-
som’s situation potentially
“more dangerous” than
Davis’ 16 years ago. “Even in
our brownouts, we weren’t
burning down half the
state.”
South believes Newsom
should soon make a major
speech to explain what he’s
doing about blackouts and
wildfires. Davis did that
about the energy crisis too
late, South says. His poll
numbers already had plum-
meted.
Newsom has been doing
a lot, along with the Legisla-
ture and previous Gov. Jerry
Brown.
He has budgeted $1 bil-
lion for new planes, helicop-
ters, fire detection cameras
— replacing the old
mountaintop lookouts —
and a lot of other firefight-
ing and prevention tools.
Equipment and crews have
been prepositioned to where
fires are most likely to erupt.
And the state just created
its own information hotline
and website because
PG&E’s haven’t been work-
ing.
At one point last week-
end, 3 million people were
without power in Southern
and Northern California,
the governor’s office esti-
mates.
Newsom speaks for
virtually every Californian
when he repeatedly declares
that’s unacceptable.A double blow of disasters for rookie governor
GOV. GAVIN NEWSOM,center, looks over the fire devastation in Brentwood with L.A. Mayor Eric Garcetti,
right, and Councilman Mike Bonin, left rear. Newsom and the state face dual crises in blackouts and wildfires.Wally SkalijLos Angeles Times[Skelton,from B1]