OC Park Rebounds from October Wildfire

October's Santiago Fire in Orange County's foothills ripped though more than 90% of Limestone Canyon and Whiting Ranch Wilderness Park. You'd think there's nothing left of the 4,300-acre park in the county's eastern hills, but you'd be wrong. And thousands of summertime visitors will see that for themselves when the park reopens on Saturday. KPCC's Susan Valot says it's a testimony to how nature can bounce back after a devastating wildfire.

Susan Valot: Work crews recently re-graded the dirt road that leads into Limestone Canyon and Whiting Ranch Wilderness Park. But it's still a rocky, bumpy ride, a ride into the world of fire recovery.

John Gannaway: So you can see a whole lot of these trees here, they were just complete skeletons, and these shrubs, like this scrub oak right here, it's all sprouting back up from the roots.

Valot: O.C. Parks District Supervisor John Gannaway points out the greenery amid charred oak trees. Blackened tendrils reach out of the brushy landscape toward the blue sky, like something out of "The Nightmare Before Christmas."

We step out into the canyon. Gannaway says when you looked at the oak trees here, right after the Santiago Fire, it was a nightmare.

Gannaway: Some of those burned to the point where all you could see is a white, ash skeleton where the main trunks were at, at one time. And where the tree came out of the ground was basically a ashen burrow of white coals right after the fire.

Valot: They stayed hot for weeks. Those trees won't come back. But the ones simply blackened by the flames already wear a halo of green foliage. Brushy scrub oak hugs the charred trunks. Wildflowers add splashes of color. Bees, butterflies, and cicadas provide a moving symphony.

[Sound of cicadas]

Valot: Park Ranger Vicky Malton says it's amazing to watch how fast the area's recovered.

Vicky Malton: Shortly after the fire, just within weeks, the yucca was coming back, and it just reminded me of little, tiny pineapples coming out of all this black ash.

Valot: And Malton says the wildflowers just exploded this year, with native flowers popping up that had never been seen in this area. Those are flowers that need fire to blossom. And the last wildfire here was in 1926.

Now, the battle is keeping out non-native plants, like mustard and wild artichokes. They can choke out the native plants. But Malton says it's kinda like trying to empty a bathtub with a thimble, so you've got to pick your battles.

Malton: There has been non-natives in this park in large quantities in other areas. Those are going to be hard to keep back. So my focus is going to be on where we had native plants, to focus on the non-natives in that area.

Valot: Park Ranger John Gannaway says the non-native plants aren't only just a nuisance to the native habitat.

Gannaway: Because of the amount of exotics, especially the mustard that comes back, it presents a major fire hazard, because it is a very flashy fuel, so it's easy to start. And so it wouldn't take a whole lot to start this, um, some of the grasses and the mustard back on fire again.

Valot: Gannaway says that's one of the major challenges. He says nature can't as easily bounce back if another major fire rips through. Gannaway says another big challenge to the park's recovery is Mother Nature herself.

Gannaway: The ongoing efforts with future rains because of the lack of a watershed now. Even though a lot of the vegetation's coming back, it's gonna take probably 5 to 10 years to reach the mature level that it once was.

Valot: But there are still hundreds of mature oak trees that survived the fire. And crews have been working for months to fix trails and trail signs so visitors can return. Gannaway says he hopes they'll come back and witness for themselves how nature rebounds.

Gannaway: I think they're going to be quite happy to see that the park isn't just a moonscape, that a lot of the vegetation is coming back quite well, and that the trails have been refurbished into an excellent condition, and that our staff is going to continue working on that, replacing all the signs, renovating the trails throughout the park.

Valot: But visitors will have to do their part. Park rangers are asking that they stick to those trails and not trample the new beginnings of nature that are trying to take hold, a new beginning park officials hope won't be wiped out by another nasty fire season.