News: Danger of fires extinguished only by winter rainstorms

Danger of fires extinguished only by winter rainstorm

By John McReynolds/Record Correspondent
Source: Lompoc Record

Smoke and flames from the Honda Canyon Fire of 1977 rise in the distance on Vandenberg Air Force Base. The fire burned 30 years ago this December. //Contributed

The Honda Canyon Fire of 1977 burned 30 years ago this December

The wildfires that sent a half million people fleeing in Southern California are now but ashes. So Lompoc can breathe a sigh of relief?

Uh, not exactly.

The most deadly fire in local history, the Honda Canyon Fire of 1977, burned 30 years ago this December. And it was not the first to spark to life as Lompoc Christmas lights twinkled.

Thirty-seven years before Honda Canyon, on Sunday, Dec. 15, 1940, three brush fires, swept by strong winds over an estimated 3,000 acres, threatened the city, according to a report by the Lompoc Record.

The paper referred to “the almost continuous string of fires from Salsipuedes Canyon to Bear Creek,” which today would mean across the hills from Highway 1 all the way to Vandenberg's South Gate.

The three fires began near Salsipuedes Canyon not far from the intersection of Highway 1 and Santa Rosa Road; in Rodeo Canyon south of San Pascual Road; and in Lompoc Canyon, south of today's south Vandenberg gate.

Winds of more than 40 mph spread them rapidly. The Salsipuedes blaze, which came to within 300 yards of city homes, was apparently the first to break out. It burned a large swath of Johns-Manville (now Celite) property and spread north to the edge of the city and west as far as Miguelito Canyon which it jumped at one point. “On the south side, the blaze came within a half mile of the J-M office building,” the Record reported.

“The strong wind was blowing glowing cinders a half mile or more,” the paper told readers. “When the fire south of the city swept northward at about 9:30 a.m. the city fire trucks rushed to the end of G Street and along Locust Avenue to protect the Veterans Memorial Building and the residential property in that vicinity.' County health department staff raced to remove files from offices at the Memorial Building.

“The blaze halted at a plowed field that protected the Memorial building and nearby residences, then it swept eastward toward the cemetery.”

Lompocan Joe Manfrina, 92, recalled the scene. “The eucalyptus trees around the cemetery just exploded,” he said. “The leaves all burned off. There were no houses up there then like there are now.”

The Rodeo Canyon blaze, which started in the early afternoon, spread to LaSalle Canyon and was estimated at 1,700 acres. The Lompoc Canyon fire burned west toward Surf and south as far as Bear Creek. It was calculated at 1,000 acres.

Record Publisher Ronald M. Adam was shocked. “Who ever thought our Lompoc hills could get so hot ... and stir up such vengeful flames as we witnessed on Sunday evening?” he wrote in his weekly commentary. “It was really startling and remarkable to see a four-mile wall of flame ... lashed by a furious wind. And those leaping flames were really terrific - 20 feet, possibly 50 feet high.”

Adam's daughter-in-law owned the newspaper in 1977 when the Honda Canyon Fire broke out.

After two years of drought, enough rain had fallen that fire season had been declared over. Storm clouds approached from the west. But therein lay the problem.

Three low pressure cells in the Pacific promised a series of storms. Combined with a stalled high pressure front over the Four Corners states, they caused hurricane-force southeast winds. At 2,100-foot Tranquillon Peak they were recorded as high as 117 mph while at sea level they reached 50 mph. Humidity was as low as 10 to 14 percent.

At 7:06 a.m. Tuesday, Dec. 20, 1977, the vicious winds snapped a power pole which served Air Force radar and telemetry sites. The pole was about two miles west of Tranquillon Peak, the highest point on the ridge. The flash point was directly east of SLC-6 and Point Arguello, where the north-south California coastline turns eastward.

The small fire burned downhill into Honda Canyon. When it reached the mouth of the canyon it exploded “like a shotgun” toward the ocean two miles away, wrote firefighter Ron Fink, today a Record columnist.

In 10 minutes it leaped from five acres to cover hundreds, then thousands. To the west it reached Point Arguello, to the east Tranquillon Mountain and to the north Bear Creek near Surf. It overran SLC-5 and surrounded SLCs 3, 4, and 6. It breached fire lines eight times causing the deaths of the VAFB base commander, the base fire chief, his assistant and a bulldozer operator. A thousand firefighters responded and 65 were injured.

The fire raged for 24 hours, scorching nearly 10,000 acres and was ultimately extinguished not by the fire crews but by the arriving rainstorm.

“It certainly makes us all reflect on the power of nature's fury,” wrote Lompocan Joseph N. Valencia in his book “Beyond Tranquillon Ridge,” the definitive account of the fire. “And it reminds us that the fire season is never truly over until the rains of winter are upon us.”

Don Oaks, of Solvang, was Santa Barbara County fire marshal for 25 years until he retired in 2001. He was present at Honda Canyon that day 30 years ago. Today he chairs the Southern California Fire Chiefs Association's Wildland-Urban Interface Committee.

Could the recent San Diego-area fires happen near Lompoc, he was asked. His response was chilling.

“There's no difference. The same thing happens here as happens there. People get mesmerized by the numbers but the exact same circumstances exist. Somebody who has a one-acre lot in Vandenberg Village or Lompoc is at the same risk as the people they saw on TV.