[Update: Thursday, 2:25 p.m.] It’s been at least 15 years since Ventura County has experienced sustained sundowner winds blowing hard out of the east in the month of December. That’s according to Andrew Madsen, public information officer for the U.S. Forest Service, which is now getting more involved in efforts to staunch the spread of the Thomas Fire. When winds exceed speeds of 30 miles an hour, Madsen cautioned, it’s not safe to dispatch fixed-wing aircraft into the fray. Currently, he said, there are seven fixed-wing air tankers secured for the Thomas Fire. They go up, he said, as conditions allow. The good news is that weather forecasts project diminishing wind speeds this evening and through the weekend. The red-flag conditions, Madsen said, are projected to end Sunday at 8 p.m. But what happens in reality does not always conform to such predictions. “These winds have a mind of their own,” he said. “If they want to pick up, they do so no matter what’s written down on paper.”
As the Thomas Fire encroaches further into Forest Service land, Madsen said, his agency has been scrambling to marshal resources to throw at it. Firewide, the Thomas Fire is now commanding the attention of 2,500 firefighters. On the eastern flank, the fire has come “perilously close” to the site of the former Matilija Fire, which last burned in 1932. That fire burned 220,000 acres — no homes or lives lost — making it, even now, the fifth-largest fire in state history. “There’s an abundance of decadent fuel beds there,” noted Madsen, accumulating over time for “decades and decades.”
One of the challenges posed by the Thomas Fire is the abundance of long-accumulating fuel coupled with dry conditions and, of course, the wind. The most recent fire in the area — the Wheeler Fire — took place in 1985, burning 118,000 acres. The biggest fire in the region remains the Zaca Fire from 2007, which burned 240,207 acres.