As firefighters increase containment against Ventura County’s devastating Mountain fire, new access to burned areas has revealed even more damage from the blaze that exploded last week during an exceptional wind event.
Officials on Tuesday said 207 structures have been destroyed, many of them homes, after more than a dozen teams inspected nearly 900 properties across the fire’s 20,630-acre footprint — an increase of more than 60 structures from the count on Monday. An additional 90 structures were also damaged, according to the latest tally from the California Department of Forestry and Fire Protection.
Officials also reported more than $6 million in agriculture losses from the fire, which burned through avocado, citrus and raspberry fields, according to Korinne Bell, Ventura County’s agricultural commissioner.
“We rank No. 1 in the state for avocados and sadly avocados have been hardest hit in this fire so far,” Bell said in a Monday night news conference. She reported 500 acres of avocado trees damaged or destroyed, 130 acres of citrus trees and 10 acres of raspberries, as well as 2,500 acres used for livestock grazing. However, she said only a quarter of agricultural areas have been assessed, so the $6 million in losses is likely an extreme undercount.
“We do expect that number to go up exponentially,” she said.
The Mountain fire was listed as 48% contained as of Tuesday morning, and officials were confident that those lines would hold even as winds were forecast to slightly pick up.
“The fire is looking really good,” Ventura County Fire Chief Dustin Gardner said late Monday. “The Mountain fire — we all feel comfortable — is buttoned up. You may see flare-ups, you may see dustups, and you’re going to feel a lot of ash and dust if you’re down wind from this fire.”
Winds could reach up to 35 or 45 mph on some high peaks Tuesday and Wednesday as humidity is expected to drop, creating some more challenging conditions, said Ryan Walbrun, a National Weather Service meteorologist assigned to the Mountain fire. However, he said it’s nothing compared to the extreme Santa Ana winds that drove the growth of this fire, pushing embers more than a mile ahead of the main blaze.
“Tuesday and Wednesday, we have very low humidity and some winds out there,” Walbrun said. “Again, this is not a red flag event and this is not anything close to when the fire started — so I’d look at this wind test as a good thing to test the containment lines.”
And as of early Tuesday, firefighters still had the upper hand against the fire.
“So far so good,” said Greg Baranek, a spokesperson for unified command responding to the Mountain fire. “Once we get past this [wind event]… we should be smooth sailing.”
But even with the worst of the fire under control, officials are now bracing for what will undoubtedly be a long, difficult road for the community to rebuild and recover. Many county officials have pointed to past fires as roadmaps for that process.
“We’re going into the recovery stage,” Gardner said. “The recovery stage is going to be long… so please be patient.”
Despite widespread damage to homes, structures and agricultural land, only minor injuries were reported from the fire, and no one has been reported missing or dead.
“This fire could have been an absolute disaster for our community,” Gardner said. “We suffered loss, but again, we had no fatalities. We suffered loss, but we’ll be able to rebuild. We can rebuild, we can recover and we can heal.”
