A fire that burned nearly 250 homes and structures in Ventura County was a rekindling of an earlier blaze that firefighters failed to fully extinguish, according to an investigation by Ventura County fire officials and prosecutors released Friday.
The findings, announced at a news conference, put more focus on the tactics firefighters use in declaring blazes out, especially after authorities concluded that the destructive Palisades fire was a restart of a Jan. 1 fire that the Los Angeles Fire Department wrongly declared fully extinguished.
The failure in Los Angeles to put out the Jan. 1 fire has sparked outrage and a federal investigation.
In the case of the Ventura County fire, fire officials said they knew there were hot spots from a tractor that ignited the blaze, but did not think they would cause any problems.
During the news conference, Ventura County Fire Chief Dustin Gardner revealed the Mountain fire came back to life, most likely because hot rubber from a burned tractor tire was picked up by extreme winds and carried into dry tinder, where the fire started anew.
About a week before the Mountain fire started on Nov. 6, 2024, a tractor caught fire in Somis while clearing brush, officials said. Firefighters responded along with a C-130 air tanker, and together they held the blaze known as the Balcom fire to 1.8 acres and declared it out after three hours at 6 p.m.
Gardner said more than 100 firefighters used hoses to put a “wet line” around the fire perimeter, while bulldozers cut away vegetation in its path and aircraft caked the ground with retardant. Then, firefighters with hand tools and infrared technology checked the area for heat.
The next day, officials said, crews flew a drone that can see hot spots over the area and detected heat near the fire’s edge and the tractor wheels. Firefighters went to those areas and dug out the smoldering material so it could cool, officials said.
Although the temperature around the wheels of the tractor was registering at 300 degrees, Gardner said that’s not unusual for equipment caught in a fire.
“Heat in a burnt-out tractor, a burnt-out carcass of steel … that is not alarming, that’s not out of the ordinary,” Gardner said.
“As an example, if you look at a tailpipe right now going in the parking lot, it would be more than 500 degrees. So it was a carcass of steel that had been burned up within the middle of the fire with more than 200 feet away from the green,” he said, referring to green vegetation that’s fuel for a fire. “After an assessment of the conditions and the containment measures in place, the decision was made to close the incident and return control to the property owner.”
Gardner said no civilians reported any signs of smoke or fire after his crews left, and it also rained.
Homeowner Dawn DaMart, right, talks to Beverly Hills Fire Capt. Kevin Kennedy in the Las Posas Hills neighborhood of Camarillo.
(Al Seib / For The Times)
But a week later, powerful Santa Ana winds arrived, and coupled with single-digit humidity, they turned the landscape into bone-dry tinder ready to burn. The National Weather Service issued a red flag warning and then upgraded it to a particularly dangerous warning.
Shortly before 9 a.m., fire dispatch got the call of a fire in the area near where the tractor burned on Balcom Canyon Road.
Winds launched burning firebrands into the hillside neighborhoods, destroying scores of homes. In Camarillo Hills, the epicenter of the wave of destruction, 182 homes were destroyed.
Though holdover fires are known to happen, having two of them grow into massive infernos within months of each other is unusual.
Wildland fire experts say that to reduce the chance of rekindle or holdover fires, departments should follow industry standards and cut a fire break around the burn scar, use hand crews to dig out hot spots and repeatedly check for hot spots in the days after. In the case of the Mountain fire, Ventura County went even further, using a drone to find hot spots.
“If we had hindsight, we could do what-ifs and judge things differently,” Gardner said. “But I am going to rely on the fact that my men and women respond a thousand times a year and mitigate emergencies based upon the situation they are facing with the tools they have in their hands.
“Our arson investigators have determined the most likely cause of the Mountain fire was extreme winds dislodging a pocket of covered hot tire debris from an earlier fire,” Gardner said.
Ventura County Dist. Atty. Erik Nasarenko said that an investigation into the Mountain fire revealed no evidence of criminal liability, and therefore his office will not be filing charges, including against the tractor owner. The tractor operator had more than two decades of experience and was operating a 2023 tractor in an appropriate manner when it caught fire, Nasarenko said.
Regardless, the county Fire Department said it would tap a third party for an independent investigation.
Most of the area burned by the Mountain fire was in a sparsely populated part of the Santa Susana Mountains north of Highway 118. The fire eventually jumped the highway and engulfed a suburban neighborhood in the Camarillo Hills. Residents fled for their lives. For the next two days, firefighters were on the defensive before eventually containing the fire.
The devastation was concentrated on a handful of streets, which were surveyed by state and county officials. On Santa Cruz Way, 89% of homes were destroyed or sustained at least minor damage. West Highland Drive saw the highest number of dwellings severely affected, with 33 out of 50.
California Department of Forestry and Fire Protection, Ventura County, National Land Cover Dataset, National Hydrography Dataset, U.S. Census, NASA
Sean Greene LOS ANGELES TIMES
The area within the Mountain fire perimeter has seen eight significant wildfires in the last four decades. Most began in the fall, when Santa Ana winds can become particularly dangerous.
While the area’s chaparral ecosystem evolved to withstand some wildfire, repeat burns every 10 or so years can create a feedback loop that erases the larger, more resilient shrubs and allows for flammable invasive grasses to take over. That phenomenon was particularly relevant last fall, which followed a hot late summer after two wet years and experienced extreme growth. About 30% of the area burned by the Mountain fire was grassland, according to a Times analysis of land cover data.
The fire destroyed or severely damaged 20 homes on both sides of Old Coach Drive in Camarillo. (Gina Ferazzi / Los Angeles Times)
West Highland Drive saw the most destruction. (Brian van der Brug / Los Angeles Times)
Ventura County was also the epicenter of two other devastating recent fires, both of which were sparked by power lines. Its firefighters are considered among the most experienced in dealing with such blazes.
The 2017 Thomas fire destroyed more than a thousand buildings as it tore through 281,000 acres of Ventura and Santa Barbara counties, becoming the largest wildfire in state history at the time. Two people were killed.
A year later, the Woolsey fire ignited under similarly heavy winds in Simi Valley. The blaze ultimately destroyed 1,600 structures — mostly in Los Angeles County — and killed two people.