Honorable Board
Members and residents of
Santa Barbara County
7/30/2007
The Zaca Fire remains very active and has challenged some of
our control lines on the east and southeast fronts, slightly breaching dozer
breaks below the peak of McKinley Mountain and Black Canyon
to the southeast of McKinley. The Peachtree residences below McKinley remain in
evacuation order status and Happy
Canyon remains in
evacuation warning status. We are taking opportunities where we can to attack
the fire's edge directly with hand crews and using air tankers and helicopters
where it is too unsafe to directly insert our firefighters. Our tactics have
been successful so far at "corralling" the fire's path and keeping it
directed into the Los
Padres National
Forest and away from our populated areas. There
is still danger though and great potential for the fire to change course toward
populated areas due to the normal summer weather conditions (erratic mountain
winds, high heat and low relative humidity). When you factor in the historically
dry fuel, the dense and continuous fuel beds, and the steep, inaccessible,
broken terrain where the fire is burning, the ingredients add up to a stubborn
fire that exhibits extreme burning conditions.
As the fire reaches
one month of active burning we need to be cognizant of the fact that this fire
is approaching record territory in duration, and until we have 100%
containment, there is potential that the Zaca Fire
could approach record territory in acreage as well. We remain active in
building contingency protection lines well out ahead of the path of the fire
and our entire team of many cooperating firefighting agencies are taking every
opportunity that we can to box it in.
We held individual
community awareness meetings for residents of the Santa Ynez Valley and Tepusquet
Canyon to inform those
communities of current and projected fire conditions. We gave those communities
an understanding of what the fire is doing, what it may do, and what we are
doing about it. We addressed their concerns and answered all of their
questions. We have also been formulating evacuation and structure protection
plans for all of the communities that have been in the fire's potential path.
In the cases of Peachtree, Happy Canyon and the Woodstock areas we have acted
on those plans, instituting evacuations as the fire front crossed our
pre-established "trigger points" and inserting "strike
teams" of structure protection firefighters and engine companies.
We will continue to
be proactive. We are planning to provide a community awareness meeting for the
Paradise, Painted
Cave, Rosario Park and
Camino Cielo communities. The need for and timing of
this meeting is dependent on fire activity, which will continue to be
evaluated. Working with the Forest Service and our other cooperators we are
doing everything we can to keep the Zaca Fire out of
our urban-interface residential areas. We want to reinforce our message that
our residents must maintain their minimum 100 foot defensible space around
their homes, be watchful for reverse 911 phone messages and media alerts, and
have their families / animals /
belongings prepared for evacuation as they will be alerted to do should it
become necessary.
Thank you,
The Santa
Barbara County
Fire Department
www.sbcfire.com
