Zaca Fire Impacts Will Linger for Years

It’s been less than two months since flames raced through the Santa Barbara backcountry, burning more than 240,000 acres in a fire that took nearly two months and more than $120 million to put out. For a blaze that turned out to be historic in proportions-it was the county’s largest and the state’s second largest, at least in recorded history-it is remarkable how quickly the Zaca Fire has faded from our consciousness. But while the fire’s smoke plumes and emergency alerts may be forgotten, its aftereffects will be with us for years.

It’s hard to get a handle on a fire that chews up 375 square miles of the rugged and remote Los Padres National Forest. Part of this is because so much of the burned area is way out of sight. There wasn’t much you could see when the wildfire was attacking its 100-mile perimeter and there’s even less now, save for a small section close to Highway 33. So despite the terror it repeatedly sparked in foothill residents and the nightly headlines it made, the Zaca Fire remained largely invisible-and its true impacts will continue to be unknown for quite a while.

The county’s water resources chief Tom Fayram has called the post-Zaca situation a sleeping giant: It may be quiet out in those hundreds of acres of watershed right now, but when the first big winter storms come ashore, we may be in for an extremely rude awakening.