Officials reveal cause of Airport Fire in Trabuco Canyon

the fire is being driven by topography and Fuel and it's right now it's headed up Canyon so quickly from a half acre the fire fire escalated to 300 acres and now sits at 1900 acres and in perspective that's 1900 football fields the fire is currently progressing as stated up Canyon right now the cruise will be working throughout the night and for the next couple of days uh for suppression and ation efforts an example of these are perimeter control and structur defense but also is stated that the fire is now moving away from the community of Robinson Ranch and it's heading up the canyon uh as we see behind us uh we are in unified command with uh Orange County Sheriff's department and also the United States forest service we did have two firefighter injuries those both were heat related injuries they were treated and trans reported to a local hospital we also had one civilian injury with smoke inhalation that uh person was also transported and treated to a local hospital currently we have approximately 1,000 firefighters on scene through the night and into the next couple of days and no properties were damaged and that's all I have to report right now I appreciate it and I will give it to the Orange County Sheriff assistant chief mcco good evening first I'd like to thank our partners with the Orange County Fire Authority for being in unified command with us I'd also like to thank the community for their support and patience as we work to respond to this fire our role in a fire incident is to assist the Orange County Fire Authority with road closures and evacuations and to ensure the safety of any homes and residents during the evacuation currently we have road closures at the following locations Plano trbo Road in Joshua Drive Plano trbo Road in Robinson Ranch Road Antonio Parkway and lost depa Trabuco Canyon Road and Trabuco Creek Road Santa Margarita Parkway and Antonio Parkway and avenita andessa and Santa Margarita Parkway uh mandatory evacuations have been ordered for the community of Robinson Ranch which is estimated about 1427 homes uh voluntary evacuation warnings are in effect for the following areas trbo Rose and Holy Jim canyon and Dove Canyon and the community of Rancho cello the Emergency Operations Center and the city of Rancho Santa Margarita have established a care Reception Center at the following location Bell Tower Regional Community Center at 22232 El Paso in the city of Rancho Santa Margarita and the Red Cross will be available to assist evacuated residents large animal shelter has been established at the Orange County Fairgrounds which is located at 88 Fair Drive in the city of Costa Mesa to evacuate the horses for any updated emergency messaging and including a map of the evacuation area please visit OC sheriff. goov back slash airport fire and this is a reminder that if residents haven't signed up for the alert OC they can sign up for alert OC and get messaging at alerto oc.com in closing I'd like to remind the residents that the incident can change at a moment's notice it's important if you live in the area to be prepared to evacuate and I want to thank again the community for their support and patience next up I'd like to welcome Cleveland National Forest District Ranger Daryl Vance good evening darl Vance District Ranger I'm the Tua ranger district of the Cleveland National Forest the uh Federal response on this fire um we really appreciate the uh the work that uh Orange County has done and um we were quick to assist with a a good initial attack response um as folks are aware this is one of three major fires burning in the Southland right now um and so um our resources uh were available and we were we jumped on this as soon as we could uh currently this is burning towards the uh generally the footprint of the uh 2018 Holy Fire and um obviously uh we don't want to make predictions on on what we think it's going to do but um we have high hopes that that's going to assist us with a fire burn scar um as as folks have noted uh we have a number of resources on the fire currently um fortunately as far as we're aware we uh do not have any um structures burned uh as of yet um but um the this fire has got a long ways to go before it's out and we do appreciate uh the patience at the community and we do ask that uh folks try and stay away from where the fire is being fought um we've got a number of gates that are closed and we as that the members Community respect uh that the uh the battle's ongoing I appreciate it uh from there I'd like to uh introduce uh Orange County Board of supervisor Dawn Wagner good evening and uh thank you all for coming out and helping us get the word out to the people of Orange County um as you've heard from the folks that have come before me it is an all Hands-On deck situation and so far everything is working in coordination once we learned about this fire we stood at the county we stood up our Emergency Operations Center I personally have had opportunities to chat with Chief fennessy of OCA with Sheriff Barnes with men and women under their command I've even talked to uh uh Orange County congresswoman young Kim who like me represents this District she's pledged the support of the federal government and so we've got all layers of government involved and then I also had a chance to call Mayor gamble to make sure that if there's anything we can do we'll do it and so I will assure you from the municipal level through the county on up to the state and the federal government we are on this doing what we can to protect life and limb out there in Orange County but the one thing that can most protect people is is not the wonderful work of the men and women behind me it is the work of you out in the community to protect yourselves your families your loved ones your animals you heard about some of the evacuation orders some of them are not yet mandatory don't wait for a mandatory evacuation order if you're under an involuntary evacuation order please no those are not issued lightly that is the time to get going that it could happen there could be an evacuation order coming your way means that's the time to get prepared figure out what you're taking how you're taking it the time to protect yourselves is now not when you get an emergency absolute order to evacuate because then you put yourself your loved ones your neighbors the men and women that are working to fight this fire all of them at risk and so to the community know that you've got some dedicated professionals here and know that they are counting on you to help do your part in protecting yourselves your property and most important your loved ones and so to the community I say as you heard from the sheriff check out alert OC go on to the sheriff's website go on to the Orange County Fire authorities website follow me my website will be putting out information Aton Wagner CA keep yourself informed as to the progress of this fire what you can do to help these men and women help you that's the message that I'd like to drive home to the community it is our turn to protect ourselves and so now now is the time to figure out what you're going to do if you're in fact forced to get out I will at this time turn it over to the city of ranch of Santa margarit as mayor who has been on this on the emergency Operation Center since the fire broke out to to tell you about the city's response ladies and gentlemen mayor Carol gamble good evening ladies and gentlemen my name is Carol gamble I'm the mayor of ranches Santa Margarita and I'm also a longtime serving board member of OCA so I'm supporting both Brands right now it gives me pleasure to thank the men and women of the Orange County Sheriff department and the Orange County Fire Authority and our friends at calire and also my city staff under the leadership of our city manager Jennifer Cervantes for the coordinated and professional response I realize that this is probably your first go around at something like this and it's scary and it's looks so bad however I want to tell you that I know every person standing here and that's because I've worked with them for years and they have worked with each other we do drills in anticipation of this type of event and so I hope that brings you a small amount of Peace for what I believe might be considerable anxiety as the previous speakers have mentioned the fire is moving away from us and I do want to say a few things first if you have been evacuated and you have an animals in your home and you have been unable to retrieve them due to the evacuation our friends at the mission beo animal shelter which is who we contract our animal services with they're stationed right down the street here at the shopping center at the corner of plet trugo and Santa Margarita Parkway they have volunteers there that are able to retrieve your animals from your home and they are doing it one at a time they're doing this for awesome for you and we're so appreciative of their efforts second it's extremely important and I thank you because I do know you're the best residents in Orange County that you follow the direction of the sheriff's department and the Fire Authority when they ask you to leave please do so when they ask you to stay off the street please do so we need the streets clear so that we can get our First Responders to the fire and the people that we are evacuating out of Harm's Way I would deeply appreciate your assistance with that and with that I thank you so much and please stay tuned to the various websites I think Don did a great job sorry supervisor Wagner did a great job outlining them this team will work all night long for you and I thank you so much thank you mayor gamble we are so fortunate that no homes were destroyed in this fire but as we get deeper into the fire season when the Santa Ana winds pick up this is a great reminder to protect your home hard in your home and keep combustibles away from Windows and your roofs this could be a far different fire if we had Sant Ana wind so we do appreciate residents heating the warnings when the sheriff's put out those evacuations for people to leave please be patient we know everybody wants to get back home but we have to make sure that fire is contained and it does not we don't have a wind shift and it doesn't threaten these communities again so and also if the smoke bothers you please stay out of the area uh if you if you are inside your homes we we recommend shutting your windows turn your AC on but stay out of the smoke we're going to open up to questions right now and then so please we'll start with the left right here and Pete if you want to start and we'll bring up Chief a govern if you would come forward please two fast questions yes sir do you have enough defensible space around the perimeter of the fire leading up to homes to where with the unit you have you can go in there and protect things when we get a wind shift and second are there any concerns about the infrastructure up on Santiago Peak yep so as far as the fuel mod modifications behind Robinson Ranch they've done a very very good job in uh overall to keep those fuel modifications in place so we did have a good buffer for that area however the fire was coming over a couple ridges it was never an immediate IM immediate threat but we did have a ton of resources up there and that whole fuel modification from behind the residence to the vegetation if you will that was a very good buffer to assist from that fire coming down into those backyards and San dieago Peak yep San dieago Peak the fire was making a run up to Santiago Peak we were working on getting Crews up there to protect the towers up there they were having some difficulty getting up there with the road a dirt road up there but what we did do we had our fixed wing come in the fix wi aircraft and lay retardant down around the uh structure up there the towers up there to prevent any damage uh since since I'd come up here there was no damage up there and the aircraft did a wonderful job by laying retarding to I believe radio towers TV towers TV towers a lot of towers are at the top of Santiago Peak if anyone else wants to elaborate what exactly is up there and then what about as far as uh cause are you guys going to be using air resources overnight and is there any containment at this point so right now we are working on our night operations plan we do have capability of flying some night aircraft so we're working on that our operations Chiefs are getting a plan to see uh if we're able to do it with the conditions we do have an important checklist we have to go through uh they're evaluating that right now that's one as far as containment uh right now we have zero containment uh established but by the morning I would anticipate that we'll have a small percentage unknown what that is it's not going to be a big number but we're hoping to get some small number out on the containment uh your third question was as far the cause so as in any fire that OCA or any Fire Authority responds to we investigate all fires and our fire investigators were out there on initial response and they they took action of what their role needed to be so the fire has been classified as unintentional the cause of the fire was a spark from heavy equipment being used to replace barriers out there two employees from Orange County Public Works were utilizing heavy equipment to Place Large Boulders as barriers off Trabuco Creek Road to restrict access into the vegetation they began the planned work this morning around 7 a.m. after placing a a load of Boulders The Operators began seeing smoke coming from the area of the loaders basket the operator and his supervisor used multiple fire extinguishers and the loaders to attempt to extinguish the fire while 911 was being called yeah so this time of year you know we always have fires burning up and down the state of California and that that's the we have such a robust uh Master Mutual Aid System where we help our neighbors and they help us and when we make those requests they can relieve some of their resources up north or around our ad adjoining res uh neighbors and they will give us resources so we have put in a large resource request a lot of those are getting filled uh outside of our County outside of our region it's our neighbors part of the master Mutual Aid System that is providing those assistance uh we have a lot of uh orders that are out they will be filled throughout the night because if you remember we have all the firefighters out there right now and tomorrow so we have to bring them off the line to get that rehab done and get new firefighters out so if you're thinking about it the number of firefighters we have right now we probably need the same amount of firefighters tomorrow so that's why we have all these resources coming in this evening with many many orders being requested through the state to get those help I have I would have to look at the resource order request but when we pushed our orders through we made it to where we had enough chief for the firehawks what you had which I understand have night flying capability are they any that will be used tonight and was part of the difficulty getting air power in there to look at there was so much dense smoke over there they couldn't actually see where the point of the fire was burning I was you know looking at the The Columns of smoke there was no visibility all they couldn't fly into that at all yep so our our new fir Hawks were on scene uh from an initial dispatch today they were doing their water drops with 1,000 gallons which was a significant assistance also calire brought in their Firehawk also to assist and we also had fix wi dropping the multiple fix wi large Air Attack uh air tanker uh airplanes come in to assist winds were not an issue today to to ground helicopters fires in the past we've been in situations where wind we had to ground them we did not have that situation and they can fly around uh navigate through smoke that was not a barrier they were able to hit the flanks and the head in a very timely and efficient and effective manner yeah so I don't know the exact area but out tro Creek Road they removing boulders to block access to the vegetation maybe to prevent cars for going off or something just kind of doing barriers to keep keep out the people out of the vegetation because of the the weather we just have right now and it's the fuels are getting to that point so we just don't want a lot of people in that vegetation unnecessarily why do people like fourwh in there or something I'm not going to answer to that but it was it was principally motorcyclists that I am told that they were trying to make sure it couldn't get back there again because of the bad conditions I can to Dr that in part um the uh the fire that you speaking to um about 2023 that was in March and winter uh so it was not during Fire season As We Know It uh this fire actually was not started on the Cleveland National Forest lands it started on private lands outside the Cleveland National Forest so a little bit different situation there were high certain well and certainly we um all of us all all of the neighboring agencies are interested in in um taking care of projects that uh uh assis both the natural lands and protect uh residents um from natural disasters and whatnot and um there is a obviously a certain amount of of activities that must take place and um whether that aligns with the the weather um is not always an easy call um I think this situation I I wouldn't want to comment I I don't really know the details on it but uh certainly um we have to do work to get things done and um to the extent that we can do that um we're uh we hope that we have all the resources in place to take care of the eventual situations like this one more question uh to my knowledge uh there were two hikers that were evacuated um I don't have any details on uh further than that uh no uh I believe they were back in tribo Holy Jim Canyons um but I don't have any DET we just have time for a few more questions and then afterwards we're all going to be available for questions go ahead ELO announ yeah there will be announcement the school district will be announcing that this evening for those residents yes that's a few more questions over here and then we're going to no uh two firefighters suffered basically heat related injuries and were transported to Mission hospital and are doing very well and there was um one person that had some smoke inhalation and he was also transport to Mission no it was um somebody else in the area I don't have all those details on that uh you have no thanks Steve okay I think we're good here we're all available for questions afterw thank you again for getting the word out you