Thomas Fire still grips avocado country
Photo courtesy: Ventura County Fire Department
Ten days after the start of the Thomas Fire in Ventura County, the blaze still was active and preventing accurate assessments of damage caused to avocado and citrus groves.
Having burned 242,500 acres as of Dec. 14, the fire was active north of Santa Paula, at the junction of Highway 150 and Highway 126, according to the California Department of Forestry and Fire.
Fire officials said nearly 1,000 structures had been destroyed and 258 damaged by the fire. Officials said Dec. 14 that the fire will continue to threaten the communities of Santa Barbara, Carpinteria, Summerland, Montecito and surrounding areas.
“I’m near Santa Paula and the sky is rosy red and there big fires still burning between Santa Paula and Fillmore,” said Ben Faber, advisor with the University of California’s cooperative extension service in Ventura County, on Dec. 14.
Ventura County has about 35% of the state’s avocado crop and 80% of California’s lemon volume.
Lemon trees have been less affected by the trees than avocado trees, Faber said.
“The avocados are planted against hillsides and that is where the fires have been burning,” he said. Normally, he said lemons are on flat ground and avocados typically on steep ground.
Avocados can become a barrier to fire progression, especially if sprinkling systems are on, he said.
Some avocado groves experienced damage on the first couple of rows of trees, with fire not reaching the rest of the grove.
However, crown fires — which burn through the top layer of foliage on a tree - can move through a grove quickly.
Faber said fire occurs somewhere in Ventura County every year, but nothing recently on the scale of this year’s Thomas Fire.
Comparing crop loss to “random violence,” damage to avocado acreage in Ventura County is “all rumors” as of Dec. 14, he said. “The real problem with avocados is that if you do get a crown fire and it goes through and knocks out the green part, but as long as it is a fast fire, the tree is going to come back,” he said. On the other hand, if the fire moves slowly and girdles the lower trunk but leaves the canopy intact can result in total loss.
“A lot of times your first impressions are terrible, because the worst looking trees come back in three to six months and the ones that look good are the ones that are going to fail,” he said. “It is a real crapshoot,” he said.
Industry reaction
It is hard to know how many avocado groves were destroyed and how many were merely damaged, Tom Bellamore president of the California Avocado Commission, Irvine, Calif.
Some growers lost their homes and groves, while others lost a portion of groves and others suffered less substantial damage. Grove irrigation systems were also damaged or destroyed in the blaze.
“We really don’t know how many groves are in each category,” Bellamore said. “That’s what we are trying to get a handle on while the fire is still going and that makes it harder.”On Dec. 12, Santa Paula-based lemon and avocado marketer Limoneira said in a news release that the company was still assessing potential property and crop damage caused by the Thomas Fire.
“Initial indications are that the company’s orchards did not suffer significant damage,” the release said, though fourteen of the company’s 265 farm-worker housing units were destroyed by the fire.
“We will know in the coming months if the fires affected our avocado or citrus crops for fiscal 2018,” Alex Teague, Limoneira chief operating officer said in the release. “In addition, we do not believe the wildfires caused any long-term damage to our orchards.”
In an earlier statement filed with the Securities and Exchange Commission, Lee Cole, chairman, president and chief executive officer of Calavo Growers Inc., said none of the company’s facilities sustained damage.
Calavo doesn’t have any farmland of its own, but Cole said he believes there will be some effect on growers who supply fruit to the company.
