Week of Santa Ana Winds Keeps Malibu on Red Flag Alert

• Extra Fire Department Crews and Equipment Bivouacked in Area for an Immediate Response

BY ANNE SOBLE

What was first announced by weather forecasters as a two-day Santa Ana event stretched into a three-day event, then a four-day event, then a week-long bout of the powerful northeast winds that left the Malibu landscape parched and local residents’ nerves frayed, as a red flag wildfire alert remained in effect throughout.
The skies may have been robin’s egg blue and the warm sunshine deceptively lulling, but extra Los Angeles County firefighting personnel and equipment were on hand as brush-covered hillsides baked in high temperatures and low humidity.
Other than a small grass fire on property near the corner of Trancas Canyon Road and Pacific Coast Highway on Saturday, there were no reports of anything requiring a formal response.
The red flag warning issued by the National Weather Service for Los Angeles and Ventura counties followed the lead of the meteorological reports. What started as a two-day wildfire alert turned into ongoing red flag status.
Temperatures reached the high 80s, which may have been the envy of Midwesterners coping with readings in the low teens, but they did not bode well when coupled with humidity numbers that veered toward single digit.
As for the Santa Ana winds, they either hissed like a giant serpent, or rumbled like a 30-car freight train, through the local canyons. Gusts as high as 72 mph were reported in the Malibu hills.
The winds dropped to the 30-mph-range intermittently, then would ratchet up to double that. Drivers on Pacific Coast Highway had to hold onto their steering wheels on open stretches where the wind blew strongest.
Fire officials announced at the start of the Santa Anas that Malibu has already dried out from the previous weeks’ rainfall, and the fire danger is now as critical as it was before the December storms.
The National Weather Service office in Oxnard kept releasing around-the-clock information about local weather conditions in coordination with Los Angeles County fire officials, who had moved extra strike teams made up of five engine crews and a battalion chief into Malibu and surrounding areas as a precaution.
Many areas of Malibu, especially at the western end, have not burned since 1993 or earlier, and these are viewed by the L.A. County Fire Department as the area’s paramount danger zones.