The Airport Fire in Trabuco and Decker Canyons is currently ablaze and has grown to over 22,000 acres and 0% containment as of 12:37 p.m. on Sept. 11, according to Orange County Fire Authority Captain Steve Concialdi. The Orange County Board of Supervisors declared a local state of emergency to open up state and federal assistance on Tuesday. There are currently no evacuation orders or warnings for Irvine residents.
Concialdi said the fire initially started at 1:04 p.m. on Sept. 9 due to the placement of heavy boulders by fire-prevention workers. The boulders intended to restrict visitors near the Cleveland National Forest from entering areas of dry brush but instead caught on an inextinguishable fire, according to USA Today.
“[The fire’s spread] is too hard to tell because it’s steep, rugged terrain, so it takes a while to get containment around a fire this size,” Concialdi said. “We’re continuing to try to keep this fire as small as possible and out of any communities and out of any businesses.”
The Elsinore Effect’s southeast winds are directing the fire away from Orange County and towards Riverside County, in the direction of Ortega Highway. The fire has burned structures in El Cariso Village and Decker Canyon, as the 1,000 fire personnel on-site and en route continue to redirect it away from communities.
“Soil erosions can cause a lot of more, bigger natural disasters in the future,” senior Jimin Han, who conducted a research project on the Silverado Fire from 2020, said. “It’s like trees breaking down, rocks falling off of a mountain. A fire itself is a really dangerous event too because we never know where it will spread, so I think it’s always great to be alert and be aware of what’s gonna happen in our environment.”
The fire’s rapid spread, from seven to 2,000 acres in three hours on Monday, can be attributed to the recent heat wave and high wind speeds, which reached temperatures of over 105 degrees and speeds of 14 miles per hour, according to recent weather reports. The Airport Fire is close to surpassing the Holy Fire in 2018 on Wednesday morning, which resulted in 23,000 acres burned and 24 structures destroyed. Many Irvine residents are also familiar with wildfires during this time of year after evacuations were mandated during the Silverado Fire in Oct. 2020.
“I think the biggest thing is I really, at least for myself, I didn’t have a plan on what to do if there was a real fire,” Rancho Santa Margarita resident, evacuee of the Holy Fire and math teacher Michelle Becerra said. “Thinking about that and knowing all the things that we’ve practiced in school made that plan come together so quickly in my brain, even though I didn’t already have one.”
To keep updated on evacuation orders and the spread of the Airport fire, follow updates on this map or call the Orange County Management Division at (714) 628-7085.
