A Division Chief for the Orange County Fire Authority gave an accounting of just how much they pitched in during the recent fires in Los Angeles during the January meeting of the Los Al City Council.
While the Santa Ana wind blast in January did prompt several small fires in Orange County, fire authorities with OCFA were busy reassigning people so that they could keep the county safe while doing everything they could to assist in the Los Angeles wildfire inferno, Division 1 Fire Chief Craig Covey said.
The report came after City Manager Chet Simmons asked Covey to provide the Council with an update. “I know there’s a lot of questions out there,” said Simmons.
Covey said every year, he worries if the Santa Ana winds occur before the winter rain.
“Every year, I get asked what do I think? How is it going to look? How’s our house going to look in this fire season,” Covey said.
“And I always answer with depends on what’s going to happen, first, the wind or the rain. If we get the rain, we’re not going to have a bad fire season. If we get the wind, then the potential is there. And you can see the potential,” he answered the question.
“As you can see, it’s catastrophic when we have a start,” the Division Fire Chief said.
“So we were very fortunate in the starts that we had during that wind event. We had winds up to 94 miles an hour during the wind events,” he said, noting that Orange County has one of the windiest canyons in all of southern California.
“We have one of the busy windiest canyons in southern California up here, just behind (the city of) Orange. So the fires that we had, we had five, we had one, actually a six, just a new one the other day. We’ve held them off to under an acre,” said Covey.
“We have not been put into a position that L.A. faced. We didn’t have a fire start under the same conditions. We dodged a bullet. We were very lucky,” said Covey.
“Could we have something like that occur?” One hundred percent,” the fire chief, notng Orange County has had disastrous fires in the past.
“We lost 400 homes in Laguna Beach. We lost 200 homes in Yorba Linda. So that environment does exist here, but it’s a very specific environment that creates that situation,” he noted.
“It takes fuel, weather and topography to come into alignment to have a situation like that,” said Covey, adding that the city of Los Alamitos “will never experience those conditions that existed in the L.A. fires,” Covey told the Council.
“Think about Paradise or the Camp fires,” he asked. “Think about the Napa fire storm or Lahaina in Hawaii,” said Covey, explaining the very specific set of conditions that caused those events.
“That’s not something you’re going to face here in Los Alamitos. So one of the positives to the conversation here,” he added.
“We have a year-round fire season. This is it. This is one of them. Chief (Brian) Fennessy always professed and backs up his statement that the greatest threat to life and property loss in Orange County is wildfire.”
He said OCFA, especially under Fennessy’s tenure, has really taken a huge step forward and is committed to always being prepared to respond to wildfires. Accordingly, Fennessy has been on national broadcasts and podcasts citing his wildfire preparedness theories.
“He’s out there championing the California response to wildfires,” Covey told the Council.
Regarding the L.A. fires, Covey said OCFA sent nine strike teams to L.A., he said, which includes 45 fire engines while even while “we’re having one of our own wind events.
“We (OCFA) really stepped up and tried to help our neighbors to the north,” he said, adding that OCFA also sent a helicopter, a dozer, a hand crew, and an additional strike team.
In addition, he said OCFA sent 10 damage inspectors that are helping with going out and cataloging all these damaged or destroyed structures so that the residents can get back in and begin the recoveries.
Covey said OCFA also sent in arson investigators to the ATF (Bureau of Alcohol, Tabacco and Firearms) Task Force to help out with that.
“We also sent five members of our search and rescue team, with two HRD canines, the canines that go out and locate people that have died.
“We have two different kinds of canines. That’s one of them,” said Covey.
Finally, Covey said OCFA sent more than 275 firefighters up there to support daily fire suppression.
Even in expending those resources, Covey was quick to point out that “we didn’t leave our dirt uncovered,” noting that OCFA went into emergency staffing conditions.
“Basically, all days off were canceled, unless we don’t have a seat to put you in. And every fire engine that had a pump or wheels that were working had firefighters on it. We back filled so that every fire station was covered,” the division Chief said.
In addition, said Covey, the OCFA is pre-positioned with support from the California Office of Emergency Services, the governor’s office, that they have pre-positioned, three strike teams of engines, two water tenders, a hand crew, two dozers, three helicopters and 14 people from the department Operations Center.
“There’s another 125 firefighters pre-positioned, ready to respond on top of our high watershed dispatch. So we normally have like 24 units going to watershed when we get a red flag like we’re in right now,” he said, “and we’re adding three strike teams and that whole list of equipment to go stomp on these things as fast as we can.”
One of the things that the chief is really passionate about is new technology. We also have a bunch of new technology with there’s cameras everywhere through our mountains now, and they have aI interfaces that work with the satellites that detect heat signatures twice this year, the cameras and the satellites detected fires before someone called 911, said Covey.
“So we are able to respond out and suppress the fires,” said Covey. He said Hennessey has expanded the OCFA helicopter fleet as well.
“If you saw the two new Black Hawks, plus he has what’s called a QRF, which is three tankers, helitankers that are 3000 gallon water dropping helicopters with a helicopter leader to respond and pound on these fires, hopefully on a catch up on initial attack,” he said.
“We lead the country with a new program called FIRES2 airborne intelligence program that provides real time mapping where the fire is going and as it’s connected to a super computer down in San Diego that gives us modeling of where the fire’s going to go for the next three hours,” Covey told the officials.
“So that guides me, like I ran the airport fire. I was in charge of operations on that I’m using that technology to inform me to make tactical decisions to fight the fire, as well as assisting local police on evacuations,” he said.
The technology helps OCFA determine where fires going, and who do they need to get out of harm’s way,” he said.
“So that’s hopefully not too long or too much of your time to update you on what we’ve done and what we’re prepared to do,” Covey told the Council.