SANTA ROSA ISLAND — Just steps above a white sand beach with calm, turquoise waves, the effects of the largest fire in Channel Islands National Park history are particularly stark: Fields of island grasses and chaparral have been reduced to ash, the earth singed to black. Hillsides are colored a rusty red from desperate retardant drops.
And when the wind whips, the air reeks of a potent campfire — but no campers are around.
It’s been just four days since firefighters reached 100% containment of the 18,379-acre blaze that scorched about one-third of the island and damaged many prized resources, including the island’s rare Torrey pines.
Sasha Travaglio hikes along a burned mountain on Santa Rosa Island.
(Kayla Bartkowski/Los Angeles Times)
The remote island — some 30 miles southwest of Santa Barbara — is typically quiet, yet the stillness feels almost heavy this sunny afternoon.
The 150 firefighters who responded to the blaze have returned to the mainland, and the island remains closed to the public. The only humans who remain are a team of about a dozen park rangers and Department of Interior scientists who are working to review the fire damage and understand the scale of the loss.
Their findings will serve to prepare for what will likely be a years-long mitigation and restoration effort.
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“There’s a lot of unknowns,” said Sasha Travaglio, a spokesperson for the Santa Rosa Island fire Burned Area Emergency Response team, which includes a hydrologist, a soil scientist, an archaeologist, a paleontologist and a botanist. “The island ecosystem is pretty diverse and complex. There are a lot of things at play: wind, visitation, the remoteness of the island.”
Still, officials say the initial days of fieldwork on this ecologically rich and culturally sensitive island
have found signs of hope.
“Much of the fire was a low burn severity, which is positive,” said Jack Oelfke, the leader of the on-site emergency response team. “That means habitat and the ecosystem should come back with time.”
They hope that includes the protected Torrey pine stand, which is one of the rarest pine species in the world. Torrey pines, named after 19th century botanist John Torrey, grow naturally only on Santa Rosa Island and in Torrey Pine State Park in San Diego. However, thousands of years of genetic isolation have made the island pine a distinct subspecies, according to the National Park Service.
Kelly Singer, acting deputy fire chief of the U.S. Wildland Fire Service’s Coastal Mountain Unit, gets off the ferry at Santa Rosa Island.
(Kayla Bartkowski/Los Angeles Times)
“It certainly has burned some large trees, but also, some were untouched,” Oelfke said. Scientists just don’t know how the trees will respond to or recover from the fire, because the island has so rarely dealt with flames, he said. Unlike other pines, the island Torrey pines are not fire-adapted.
“We’re hoping that there’s going to be a quick recovery path,” Ethan McKinley, superintendent of Channel Islands National Park, said of the pines.
McKinley acknowledged that much of that recovery process — for the unique trees, and otherwise — “is a big TBD.” But luckily, he said, the park has a robust “ecological baseline,” which includes two decades of population monitoring, species documentation and vegetation inventories that can help guide and inform next steps.
Beyond the Torrey pines, five other plant species are endemic to Santa Rosa — meaning they don’t grow naturally anywhere else in the world. They include the Santa Rosa Island manzanita and soft-leaved paintbrush, according to the park service. It is also home to a lizard species found only on three of the Channel Islands; a spotted skunk that lives on just two Channel Islands; a unique island fox subspecies; and several uncommon birds. The island also contains many culturally significant sites for the Chumash people.
Jack Oelfke, BAER team leader for the Santa Rosa fire, walks past untouched and burned areas of Santa Rosa Island.
(Kayla Bartkowski/Los Angeles Times)
Federal officials said they are still working to understand exactly how the fire might have affected the species, as well as the landscape, cultural sites, restoration projects and visitor resources. The Burned Area Emergency Response team is expected to complete its on-island work this week, before finalizing a report and making recommendations.
Already though, there’s been positive signs for the island foxes and the western snowy plover, a threatened shorebird that has a year-round population on Santa Rosa.
“Over half of the island didn’t burn, so there’s still really good habitat for the fox to move over to,” Travaglio said. “There might be some population decline because of the loss of habitat, but likely the fox will rebound.”
Initial assessments of the plover also failed to identify any dramatic declines.
“It looks like plover habitat was minimally impacted, which is great news,” Travaglio said, pointing to the island’s eastern point, where beaches are closed during the spring and summer to protect the birds’ nesting area.
As she spoke, her eye caught sight of some new greenery already popping up in a completely singed field.
“There are a lot of areas that are resprouting with native plants, like this native grass,” Travaglio said, smiling. “Nature always prevails.”
There was a point recently, however, when it seemed as if all might be lost on Santa Rosa Island.
An image on a smartphone depicts wildfire damage while resting on a map of Santa Rosa Island.
(Kayla Bartkowski/Los Angeles Times)
It was three days after a stranded mariner’s emergency flare apparently sent flames raging through the south end of Channel Islands National Park’s second-largest island.
Winds of up to 50 mph stoked the flames and severely limited the fire response by hampering boat and aircraft access to the remote island.
“Not much the firefighters can do when it was blowing that hard,” said Kelly Singer, acting deputy fire chief for the newly minted U.S. Wildland Fire Service’s Coastal Mountain Unit, which led the response to the fire. “It’s not like we have fire engines out there, so it’s all by hand. We had to rely on Hotshot crews and small, 10-person” teams.
Still, he said they worked hard to create boundaries and hold those lines despite the fire’s ballooning acreage, up to 30-foot flames in some areas and the uncooperative weather conditions.
On Day 4 of the fight, officials realized that the few dozen fire crews on the ground needed air support to maintain the fire lines they’d secured — yet winds didn’t appear to be letting up.
“It was grim days in the first few days of this fire,” McKinley said. “That night, I didn’t sleep. … A full island burn would have been the worst case.”
He said there ended up being a few “slop-overs” that night, or pockets of fire breaking out of built fire lines, but fire crews fought hard to contain them from reaching critical park resources, including buildings and campgrounds.
“They held the line, and we have them to thank for saving housing, saving the island, saving the history of the Santa Rosa Island,” McKinley said.
Jack Oelfke, BAER team leader for the Santa Rosa fire, walks a burned area at Santa Rosa Island.
(Kayla Bartkowski/Los Angeles Times)
Luckily, the next morning, air tankers were able to make it to the island, dropping much-needed retardant and water — both under strict parameters to limit environmental damage. Then, the following day, large “super-scooper” aircraft arrived and were able to drop seawater on remaining hot spots.
“Without the tanker support, we probably wouldn’t have been as successful as we were,” Singer said.
The fire was first spotted May 15 by a plane flying over the island. Although the official cause of the fire remains under investigation, the Coast Guard and witnesses have told The Times that the fire was inadvertently sparked by a man who crashed his sailboat into rocks on the island’s rugged south side and then fired emergency flares to signal for help.
The fire also destroyed two historic structures — Johnson’s Lee Equipment Shed and Wreck Line Camp Cabin — as well as a storage building and a wind shelter at Water Canyon Campground.
The island remains closed to the public through at least June 30, though the park has alerted people with campsite reservations through Aug. 14 that they may be be canceled.
“We’re going to try to restore access at some level as quickly as is reasonably possible,” McKinley said. “These places only last for a generation or two if you don’t inspire that next generation to take care of them. … So inspiring the American people is part of our mission, and it’s as important as protecting these resources.”
And inspiration is easy to find in this piece of North America’s so-called “Galapagos,” where the Pacific sparkles in the background of any burn scar.
“Every fire is complex,” Travaglio said. “I’m in these beautiful places at their worst.”
But that, she knows, is temporary.
