Laguna Canyon, 10 years later

ELISABETH M. BROWN

“Last week’s fire burned about 10,000 acres of the 15,000 acre Laguna

Greenbelt, and over 350 homes in Laguna Beach alone. Although the

hills are blackened and appear devastated, they are in much better

shape than the burned neighborhoods.”

That’s how I started a column just days after the Oct. 27, 1993,

Laguna Canyon wildfire.

Recent photos from San Diego and San Bernardino brought it all

back: the moonscape that was our backcountry 10 years ago. The wind

blew streamers of black ash from ridge tops, and the whole landscape

was suddenly unfamiliar terrain.

Numbed with shock, we visited Laguna Coast Wilderness Park with

Ranger Larry Sweet just 10 days after the fire. Water was running in

Laurel Creek.

Smoldering Live Oak logs emitted wisps of smoke. Stones littered

the roads, released from the hillside when the shrubs holding them in

place burned away. Vultures circled in the sky.

Everything we saw was black and gray except for a handful of tiny

green shoots in one small patch. They were just nonnative European

grass, but they signaled that the recovery was already underway.

Fresh spider webs carpeted the ground, and new pocket gopher diggings

were everywhere.

What’s it like out there today? At one level, the park seems to

have recovered. Here and there, a burned stump is a reminder of 1993,

but otherwise the scars have faded. Hillsides are covered with

vegetation, birds bounce from tree to tree. Under the oaks is a thick

layer of crunchy leaf litter -- oaks grow their own mulch. In the

canyons, the familiar tangle of shrubs and vines includes dead

branches from plants that regrew from the ground up ten years ago.

This could indicate that we are approaching a mature vegetation.

At another level, however, we have not returned to the prefire

condition.

Some invasive weeds, especially tree tobacco, are still

flourishing. Much of the hillside vegetation is bush mallow, a native

shrub that was extremely rare in 1993. For some reason, it has not

been replaced by the lemonadeberry, toyon, and laurel sumac that used

to dominate.

Changes in the vegetation indicate that there are probably

wildlife shifts as well. For example, Coastal Cactus Wrens need

four-foot high cactus for their nests; until these regrow, we won’t

see these wonderfully brash birds in the park. On the other hand,

some animals, like the cottontail rabbits, may be doing better than

before the fire.

Maybe the verdict is “recovered, but not the same,” like the

in-town recovery. The burned out neighborhoods have returned, with

new houses and sometimes new people, but no one pretends they are the

same neighborhoods that burned in 1993.

Noted ecologist and author Dr. Allan Schoenherr will present a

slide show and explain fire ecology and fire recovery in coastal sage

scrub at the Laguna Greenbelt, Inc. Annual Meeting, 7 p.m. Thursday,

Feb. 26, at the Women’s Club (St. Ann’s Drive at Glenneyre Street).

The public is welcome. Refreshments will be available. Bring a

friend!

* ELISABETH M. BROWN is a biologist and the president of Laguna

Greenbelt Inc.