Michael Smolens: Column: A bad fire season looms. Blame the rain

May 31-- May 31--Water doesn't put out wildfires. It only makes them worse.

That's pretty much the message we've been getting about the coming wildfire season, which is kind of a misnomer because the season seems year-round these days. The tremendous rain that has fallen on the state may have created lush, flowery hillsides. But make no mistake: All that water has resulted in extensive vegetation growth that will dry out and turn into fuel for wildfires.

At the beginning of May, the National Interagency Fire Center said the fire threat in California will be "above normal," another term that tends to lose meaning given the ever-present fire danger. This seems even more so following the deadly Camp fire late last year in Northern California, which devastated the town of Paradise and killed more than 80 people.

The notion of vegetation growth from rain contributing to wildfire danger is nothing new. But it underscores that no typical California weather pattern, ultimately, is good for tamping down the fire threat, except during downpours and short periods of cool weather.

Californians are always warned that hot, dry and windy weather makes for "tinderbox" conditions, heightening the threat of wildfire. It doesn't seem fair that we don't get a longer-term benefit -- firewise -- from heavy rain. Sure, the unusual storm sequence that pushed through much of May will put the threat off for a few weeks, but the overgrown fuel will dry out as surely as Santa Anas will blow.

Even though it rained earlier this week, fires broke out Wednesday in the Dulzura area, forcing Highway 94 to close temporarily.

It turns out the breathtaking "super bloom" we marveled at is a fire hazard. That's California for you, where beauty not only goes hand in hand with danger, but sometimes eggs it on. After a prolonged drought, we're supposed to praise the heavens for opening up so dramatically and replenishing dwindling water supplies -- even though it led to mudslides that further imperiled communities ravaged by wildfires.

There's a dilemma about what to do regarding people who live in fire zones. An analysis by the Los Angeles Times showed there are 1.1 million structures in the state's highest-risk fire areas. Not surprisingly, Los Angeles has the most buildings, 114,000, in those danger zones. San Diego is No. 2 with 88,000.

California has 8,900 very severe fire hazard areas, according to the Department of Forestry and Fire Protection, known as CAL FIRE, which developed a map of the fire zones throughout the state.

"Now that they've got these areas mapped out, what's going to happen?" Richard Halsey, director of the nonprofit California Chaparral Institute, told the Times. "It's so frustrating. Everybody sees the information, and they sit on their thumbs and talk."

Despite statewide soul searching after massive conflagrations, not a whole lot changes. Laws have mandated fire-resistant materials, designs and other strategies for new development in danger zones, but not so much for what's there now. A lot of existing homes were built before the newer building standards were adopted, though rules have been strengthened to clear nearby vegetation.

Plans continue apace in San Diego County and elsewhere to build large suburban communities in high-risk fire areas. Some 10,000 homes are on the drawing boards for fire-prone areas beyond San Diego's urban fringe. At least one of the developments, Adara at Otay Ranch, is planned for an area that has experienced regular wildfires, according to the Union-Tribune's Joshua Emerson Smith.

Local elected officials and fire authorities say evacuation plans, vegetation clearing and fire-safe building technology will help protect the residents there.

"We're going to continue to have fires," CAL FIRE Deputy Chief David Nissen told Smith. "They're going to be a part of people's lives in Southern California and California generally. It's what we do to adjust to minimize risk."

Nissen oversees the risk reduction program for the San Diego County Fire Authority.

Officials who support these projects say housing is desperately needed across California. They're facing a Catch-22 here. Both suburban and urban in-fill housing development has run into stiff opposition at the state and local level. Critics of the push for a building boom say there's not a housing crisis, but an affordable housing crisis that is not being addressed in the rush to loosen construction rules. In any case, building homes anywhere doesn't seem to be getting easier.

Increasingly, proposals to build in high-risk fire zones are being questioned, and not just by environmental groups promising to take legal action to stop such developments. Similarly, skepticism is growing over the reflexive reaction to rebuild communities that have burned down. In addition to the human cost, insured losses from California wildfires last year totaled more than $12 billion, according to state Insurance Commissioner Richard Lara.

Upon his retirement as CAL FIRE director in December, Ken Pimlott said it's time for California to rethink further construction in high-risk fire areas.

"We've got to continue to raise the bar on what we're doing and local land-use planning decisions have to be part of that discussion," he told the Associated Press in December.

Maybe San Diego will dodge the bullet like it did last year and not suffer the kind of massive fires that tore through other parts of the state. But that lull, if it continues, won't last forever. Our currently soggy fuel probably guarantees that.

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