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Damage could be 300% higher than '03, chief says
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Dana Rene Bowler / Star staff Firefighters get ready to fight the Malibu fire near an apartment complex in the 23300 block of Pacific Coast Highway. Five homes were destroyed and others damaged in the fire, which started Sunday morning near Malibu Canyon Road.
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Dana Rene Bowler / Star staff As flames burn on the hillside behind him, Henry Pope comforts his dog Tobey across from his apartment in the 22300 block of Pacific Coast Highway in Malibu. The fire, which started early Sunday morning, had burned 2,200 acres and was reported 10 percent contained as of late Sunday. Firefighters expect to battle the blaze all week.
The staggering wave of fires Southern California is experiencing could do more damage across the region than the destructive firestorms of four years ago, Ventura County Fire Chief Bob Roper told the county Board of Supervisors on Tuesday.
Roper said this wave of fires is more intense than the big fires of 2003, and in cost — as far as money, property damage and loss of life — the toll will probably exceed the 2003 fires by 300 percent, he said.
"In Southern California, what you're going to see is some whole communities wiped out when the smoke clears," Roper said.
Ventura County has not suffered the worst of the current fires. Roper said that in the past three days there have been 17 brush fires that started in the county, and every one of them — except the Nightsky fire in the Santa Rosa Valley — was put out quickly before it could really spread.
The Nightsky fire began Sunday and was contained Monday.
County Agriculture Commissioner Earl McPhail told the supervisors, "We haven't heard of any (crop) damage from the fire, but we have sustained a tremendous amount of damage from the wind. What didn't freeze in January is now on the ground," he said, referring in particular to tree crops such as citrus and avocados.
The board voted unanimously Tuesday to declare a state of emergency, a necessary step for certain types of relief assistance.
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