RAMONA, Calif. (KGTV) – Enjoy the calm breeze and 80-degree temps for now.
“We’ve got Santa Ana wind pattern coming up,” Captain Mike Cornette of Cal Fire San Diego County said. “We have winds anywhere from 20 to 30 miles per hour throughout the County.
Cornette told ABC 10News the winds are going to pick up overnight on Monday and last through Wednesday.
“It is dry. It is warmer than seasonal average. So we are experiencing heighted fire danger at this time,” Cornette said.
But the rain we’ve gotten over the last month helps with what fuels possible fires.
“We are starting to get grass, green grass, which is a benefit for us. But, going into next fire season, that’s going to provide for fine, dead fuels that are receptive to embers and burn a lot quicker than brush,” Cornette said.
As we wait for the wind, there are also the sights and sounds of construction and progress at Cal Fire’s Ramona Air Attack base.
“We're doing a reconstruction, a total reconstruction of the retardant loading bases here at Ramona Air Attack Base,” Cornette said. “In anticipation of the C-130 that we're getting in the spring and to make it more efficient, we're putting instead of these turnaround bays, we're having more of a pit-style retardant bay.”
ABC 10News has reported on the scheduled construction happening at the agency’s air attack base in East County for the C-130 air tanker.
Despite the retrofitting for the large airplane, Cornette said they’re prepared for whatever fires may come our way right now as we welcome future firefighting resources.
“The only thing that's changed is these air tankers instead of reloading with retardant here have to go to Hemet-Ryan Airport to reload. So that's the only difference. There's a bit of lag time for that. But we have already set in place that we're going to augment the response with additional air tankers to close that gap,” Corrnete said. “So having those extra air tankers available to respond to the fire, that gets us to our goal of trying to get a drop of every 5 to 10 minutes with those air tankers.”
