Berkeley scientist comments on fire research

As firefighters begin to get the upper hand on the Southern California wildfires, the co-director of the UC Berkeley fire center had the opportunity to give Los Angeles Times readers a glimpse of research underway on this perennial threat.

Max Moritz and his colleague Alex Hall of UCLA are mapping Santa Ana wind corridors in Southern California. The Santa Anas blow when desert winds push down canyons over passes and low mountains, warming and gaining speed along the way, according to the Times article. Fires tend to rage along specific corridors. A corridor along the Santa Susanna Pass, for example, has burned 12 times since 1925 and may have burned a 13th time this week, the article said.

"It's really a striking pattern," Moritz was quoted. "Our preliminary work shows that these corridors line up well with fire history patterns, fire frequency and fire size."

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