Thomas Fire name forever linked with campus near its starting point

As New Year's Eve rolled in Sunday, the Thomas Fire turned 28 days old.

Its origin in Ventura County on the evening of Dec. 4 will be forever linked to where it started: below Thomas Aquinas College, east of Highway 150 outside Santa Paula.

The current incident commander, Battalion Chief Dave Valencia of the Los Padres National Forest, said wildfire names are generally based on geographical locations.

"Once the first engine gets on scene," he said, dispatch units usually name it based on where the blaze started. One recent example is the 2009 Jesusita fire in Santa Barbara County, which started near the Jesusita Trail there, he said.

"It's kind of a reference point," Valencia said.

Years ago, incident commanders would name fires themselves, he said. Now, to avoid name confusion, they no longer do.

In the case of significant fires -- such as the Thomas Fire, which not only is now California's largest recorded wildfire but also resulted in a line-of-duty death of Cal Fire Engineer Cory Iverson on Dec. 14 -- the U.S. Forest Service will never use the name again, he said.

"It's a retired name," Valencia said.

The fire's cause is still under investigation.

At the end of the Thomas Fire's fourth week — which coincided with the final day of 2017 — the fire that ripped through parts of Ventura and Santa Barbara counties has become largely a rear-view mirror phenomenon in terms of active burning.

In areas where significant fire suppression efforts were undertaken, agencies are currently engaged in large-scale repair efforts.

One such example is along East Camino Cielo and Gibraltar Road above Santa Barbara, where bulldozers carved out wide avenues of bare dirt in Los Padres National Forest land.

The massive dozer lines are meant to take vegetation out of the fire's path, said Courtney Rowe, a resource adviser with the Forest Service who has been working the Camino Cielo site as well as the Rose Valley area north of Ojai.

Bulldozers strip off growth all the way down to mineral soil to keep fire from creeping through, said Rowe, whose home unit is the Tahoe National Forest. The bare areas provide protection for firefighters and allow for back burns, where potential fuel is intentionally burned away before the fire can get to it.

When the fire is no longer a threat, the road-like fire lines carved into mountainsides can invite unauthorized uses by off-roaders and others. So fire officials put barriers such as boulders in place to keep people from driving down them, she said.

The dozer lines can also cause erosion problems. Current repair work also means topsoil that was bulldozed to the side is now being pushed back over the bare mineral soil, Rowe said. The topsoil is a good source of native seed that will help the original plant species grow back.

The Thomas Fire is still burning in some wilderness areas, but no longer threatens people or homes. Its statistics are largely unchanged in recent days: acreage Sunday was 281,893 and containment was 92 percent. Some 1,063 structures have been destroyed, including 775 single-family homes, and another 280 structures have been damaged.

As of Sunday night, 405 personnel were still working the incident. Headquarters moved on Saturday from the Ventura County Fairgrounds to the Los Prietos Ranger Station on Paradise Road, off Highway 154 above Santa Barbara.The move went along with a change of command, with the incident now being overseen by the Los Padres National Forest.