Wolf Fire

The Wolf Fire was a large wildfire in Southern California's Ventura County, north of the city of Ojai, in June of 2002. The fire was ignited on June 1 by the careless use of firearms for target shooting in dry grass and burned 21645 acres, destroying six structures before it was completely contained on June 14. The cost of containing the fire came to $15 million. No fatalities or serious injuries occurred, but the fire impacted large parts of the Sespe Wilderness and the Los Padres National Forest, causing road and campground closures while threatening Native American cultural sites and wildlife habitat. The Wolf Fire was the sixth largest of the 2002 California wildfire season, during which 8,171 wildfires burned a total of 538216 acres.

Background
Southern California received very little rain in the winter and spring leading up to the Wolf Fire, marking a fourth year of drought. Vegetation moisture levels were very low and fire activity was consequently elevated. It became one of the earliest fire seasons in decades—fire officials declared the beginning of fire season in mid-April in much of Southern California, including Ventura County, a month before the usual date.

Fire danger in the Los Padres National Forest in 2002 was also heightened by a lack of prescribed burning to thin out vegetation: a shortfall in congressional funding meant that only ~5000 acres of the hoped-for annual 20000 to 25000 acres was treated with prescribed fire. The last large wildfire in the region was the 200000 acres Matilija Fire in 1932, which informed fire crews' understanding of the Wolf Fire's potential for growth.

Cause
The Wolf Fire began shortly before 3:00 p.m. PDT on June 1, approximately 100 ft from the Wolf Grill restaurant, an establishment located on California State Route 33 roughly 12 mi north of Ojai in the Los Padres National Forest. U.S. Forest Service investigators later determined, bolstered by the eyewitness accounts of members of a bicycling tour group, that the fire was ignited unintentionally by people shooting at an abandoned van in dry grass and brush adjacent to the restaurant. No suspects were ever identified, nor arrests made.

Progression
As soon as the fire broke out next to the Wolf Grill, patrons attempted to call the authorities, but were unable to for lack of cellular service in the area. A motorcyclist eventually alerted fire crews at a Forest Service fire station twenty minutes' drive north, but they did not arrive at the scene of the fire until forty minutes after it had ignited.

The fire, originating in the main stem of the Sespe Creek drainage and benefiting from warm, dry, and breezy conditions, entered dense chaparral vegetation in rugged terrain and grew quickly. Despite the efforts of seven aircraft (both air tankers and helicopters) and ground crews, what had been roughly a 30 acres fire at 3:00 p.m. expanded to 200 acres by 5:00 p.m. and 450 acres by 9:00 pm. As it grew, the fire jumped across Highway 33 and forced officials to close the highway between Rose Valley and Pine Mountain Summit. No evacuation orders were issued.

The closed portion of Highway 33 remained so on Sunday, June 2, as the Wolf Fire moved east along the highway between Pine Mountain and Chorro Grande Canyon. Embers carried the fire across Highway 33 again at 11:00 a.m. As the fire progressed, it destroyed three abandoned buildings formerly used for horseback camping. By the end of the day the fire had burned approximately 2500 acres and it was five percent contained. A spokesman cautioned that the fire had "extreme" potential for growth, and that firefighters did not think they could contain the fire in Chorro Grande Canyon with their available resources, but hoped to keep it out of the Matilija Wilderness and Sespe Wilderness to the south and east respectively.

They were unsuccessful—on Monday, June 3, the fire entered the Sespe Wilderness. Winds out of both the southeast and northeast encouraged spot fires. The 18 mi portion of Highway 33 remained closed between Rose Valley and Lockwood Valley. Firefighters retained a defensive footing, noting that they could not get in front of the fire even as they planned to keep it within a 'box' bounded by Cherry Creek and Pipeline Road to the west, Dry Lakes Ridge and Rose Valley Road to the south, Sycamore Creek to the east, and Pine Mountain Ridge to the north.

On Tuesday, June 4, the fire expanded to about 7500 acres with 15 percent containment after burning north through the Derrydale Creek drainage. Firefighters struggled through temperatures of 90 °F and a relative humidity of under ten percent, which in combination with the dry vegetation led to flame heights of 100–300 ft.

The incident management team (IMT) assigned to the Wolf Fire (in this case, California IMT 4) established a main camp in Soule Park in Ojai itself, supplied with bathroom facilities, a kitchen, and tents, from which to manage the multi-agency fire suppression effort. From there, many firefighters were flown in to the remote flanks of the fire, and others made do by hiking in several miles on foot. Many personnel worked shifts of more than 30 hours at a time in hot, windy weather. The geographic information system (GIS) and mapping unit went though 300–400 ft of paper per day. Fire officials told the Ventura County Board of supervisors to expect the fire to burn for another week, and the director of the California Department of Forestry and Fire Protection (Cal Fire) noted that the Wolf Fire was low on the priority list for firefighting resources, given the lack of a significant threat to life and private property. Despite this, at the peak of the fire more than two dozen aircraft—both fixed-wing and helicopters—were used to drop water and fire retardant.

On Wednesday, June 5, the fire burned northeast towards and then along Pine Mountain Ridge. As the fire neared the Sespe Condor Sanctuary, special permission was granted for bulldozers to operate in the Sespe Wilderness, where such heavy machinery is normally prohibited by federal regulations. Firefighters used the opportunity to construct a 6 to 10 mi containment line on the southern end of the wilderness area, between the fire and the sanctuary. By the end of the day the Wolf Fire had burned more than 10000 acres and remained 15 percent contained. Then, overnight, the fire ran hard to the east. It traveled about 6 mi through the Sespe Wilderness, roughly doubling in size to just shy of 20000 acres. This made it the second largest active wildfire in the state, just behind the nearby Copper Fire in Los Angeles County.

On June 6 the fire continued to grow aggressively to the northeast via long-range ember spotting, while crews focused on containment lines for the fire's northwestern and southern flanks.

Beginning on Friday, June 7, the weather became less conducive to fire growth: the higher temperatures and winds abated, and moisture from the nearby marine layer made its way to the Wolf Fire. The fire's forward progression slowed, and by sunset fire officials were calling the fire 25 percent contained. Air tankers continued to drop water or fire retardant, basing out of Lancaster and Goleta. Between June 8 and June 9, the fire grew by only 55 acres. Firefighters succeeded in keeping the fire south of Pine Mountain Ridge and north of Sespe Creek, minimizing the threat to more developed areas. Four hundred firefighters rappelled in to an inaccessible part of the fire on the northern slope of Pine Mountain Ridge, spending multiple days completing containment lines there with hand tools. One battalion chief with the San Bernardino National Forest opined that but for the change in the weather, the Wolf Fire could have burned to Interstate 5 to the east.

Late on Monday, June 11, the fire had burned approximately 21300 acres and was 60 percent contained. Hundreds of firefighters were released from their assignments as the number of personnel ticked down from 2,000 to about 1,100. Containment increased to 85 percent on June 12, then 90 percent on June 13. The last portion of open fire line was at the fire's northeastern corner near Thorn Point. The Wolf Fire was declared fully contained at 6:00 p.m. on Friday, June 14. Three helicopters were retained to monitor the fire over the weekend in case of any re-ignition. The cost of containing the fire amounted to about $15 million, roughly equivalent to $ million in.

The Wolf Fire burn footprint later acted as a barrier to the spread of the 162702 acres Day Fire in 2006.

Effects
Four firefighters were injured. Three suffered from heat exhaustion and/or dehydration —two of whom were taken to the hospital on June 4 —and one was stung by a bee. Firefighters discovered a body in a remote area on June 12, towards the end of fire containment operations, but it was confirmed as that of a suicide victim from three years prior.

The Wolf Fire destroyed six structures, four of which were unoccupied ranch buildings, and two of which were outbuildings for a vacation home. The Wolf Grill restaurant itself was not damaged in the fire.

The entire Sespe Wilderness was closed, as were multiple campgrounds, including those in the Pine Mountain and Rose Valley regions. Four hikers who, while not in distress, might have been in the fire's path, were rescued by the Ventura County Sheriff's Department on the morning of June 7. Highway 33 re-opened on June 6. Large portions of the Los Padres National Forest closure order were rescinded on July 5, re-opening all national forest lands north of Sespe Creek to Pine Mountain Ridge, and west of Highway 33/Burro Creek to Trout Creek.

Cultural resource impacts
The Wolf Fire threatened more than 200 petroglyphs or pictographs, as well as other artifacts, left behind by the Chumash native people more than five thousand years before the fire. Forest Service archeologists conducted multi-week surveys in the month following the fire, assessing damage (and the degree of vulnerability to looting) at both known and previously unknown Native sites. The chief archeologist for the Los Padres National Forest told the Los Angeles Times that at least some "ancient rock art [which included] depictions of day-to-day life among the Chumash" had been damaged by smoke or soot.

In October following the fire, Public Employees for Environmental Responsibility (PEER), a national watchdog nonprofit organization, published a white paper written by "former cultural resources staff and volunteers" with the Los Padres National Forest. The PEER report alleged that "the fire and bulldozed fire lines severely damaged known prehistoric sites", including the Piedra Blanca rock art site, and that fire personnel and archaeologists had not taken adequate care to avoid damaging sites during fire break construction or forestall fire/smoke damage at them by installing protective measures. The allegations were part of a wider denouncement of Los Padres National Forest leadership, and received coverage in the Los Angeles Times. A state and federal interagency team reviewed the PEER report's allegations in a report of their own the following spring and professed to find the allegations—including those regarding the Wolf Fire—without merit.

Environmental impacts
The forest coordinator for the Los Padres National Forest referred to the deleterious effects of the Wolf Fire on the environment as "minimal" and noted the natural role that wildfires play in regenerating the landscape. The Burned Area Emergency Rehabilitation (BAER) team assigned to the fire found little risk of dangerous flooding or debris flows in the Sespe Creek watershed, barring extraordinarily heavy rainfall. Nonetheless the BAER team and fire crews performed erosion mitigation work, repaired/installed rain and stream gauges, and restored containment lines.

Forest Service biologists were concerned about the fire's impacts on habitat for the arroyo toad and southern steelhead trout species populations, in addition to damage to the Condor Sanctuary. The Wolf Fire burned 12 percent of the entire Sespe Creek watershed. The fire was of sufficient severity to be stand-replacing in upland chamise-manzanita stands as well as adjacent white alder-coast live oak stands in the Piedra Blanca Creek drainage.

The fire burned at a high enough elevation that smoke did not infiltrate local communities, though ash from the fire drifted southeast and reached the coast and the Simi Valley.