As Moorpark City Councilman Keith Millhouse surveyed land Friday charred by the Simi Valley fire, he thought it looked like the moons surface.

Gray ash reminiscent of the moons powdery landscape covered the panoramic hillsides overlooking portions of Moorpark.

Millhouse stood with city officials during a tour of areas damaged by the wildfire that has burned 107,590 acres, many in and around Moorpark and Simi Valley.

At the first stop on the tour, city officials,joined by Ventura County Fire Chief Bob Roper and Moorpark Police Capt. Richard Diaz, looked over land that just two years ago burned in a fire caused when a beekeeper crashed his truck into a utilities pole.

At one of the stops, Barry Hogan, the citys community development director, said local developer DeeWayne Jones, who escaped loss during the 2001 fire, had his mobile home destroyed this time around.

At another stop, Mayor Patrick Hunter recalled watching the fire move quickly Saturday through the mountainside behind a housing tract near Moorpark College and toward Gabbert Road.

After calling Diaz to evacuate residents, Hunter said, he drove to Gabbert, but the fire had already crested the hillside and reached the area.

The fire was already choking off the entrance into the area, the mayor said.

Earlier, city staff members listened to Roper explain how the fire progressed from the Santa Clara River near Highway 126 to Simi Valley before making its way to Moorpark.

Roper described it as The Perfect Storm, referencing a massive 1991 storm off the East Coast when three storms collided.

At its peak, the fire burned 10,000 acres an hour, and fire dispatchers received 3,000 phone calls, Roper said.

Golf courses and freeways are usually great stopping areas, but this fire didnt even blink,he said.

He also talked about a gated community near Balcom Canyon Road where residents were briefly trapped because an electric gate leading into the housing tract would not open. Firefighters eventually freed the residents when they pried the gate open.

Millhouse, who lives in a gated community near the Carlsberg development, criticized the developers because the gate had no visible manual control.

It doesnt do anyone any good to have one or two people who know the secret code, he said. You have to get people out or theyre going to panic.

Although the fire never reached the Villa del Arroyo mobile home park, residents could not escape damage or destruction.

Roper said embers from the fire ignited, maneuvering underneath several mobile homes and causing them to burn.

Im still shaking my head over what happened, Roper said.