On Tuesday morning, April 9, 2024, firefighters received a 9-1-1 call reporting a small brushfire in the backcountry of Eaton Canyon. The call came from a neighbor in the Canyon Close neighborhood overlooking the canyon at 6:17am. Only 9 minutes later, firefighters were on scene and headed into the park. By 6:33am, firefighters confirmed a fire was occurring and a full brush response was en route. Over the next hour, a fireline was cut around the fire and down the nearby hillside to allow for firefighter access.
This spot fire occurred at the top of a steep hill close to the beginning of the Meadow Trail within the Los Angeles County Parks and Recreation jurisdiction. Only a 10×10 foot area was burned in the brushfire. A tent possibly belonging to a transient was found only a few feet away. Temperatures were around 60°F with humidity levels around 30% at the time of the incident. Santa Ana winds were gusting out of the northeast to 17 MPH at the Pinecrest Gate nearby, but winds were likely weaker by Coyote Canyon where the fire occurred, with negligible gusts of 5 MPH from the northeast.
Over the past 18 months, Eaton Canyon has observed about 75″ of precipitation. This officially makes the October 2022 – April 2024 period the wettest 18-month period on record out of 116 years of weather record keeping. Thanks to enormous amounts of precipitation, overall water content in the canyon is high and vegetation is unlikely to burn. Over the coming weeks and months, however, this enormous fuel load will dry out. A repeat of kind of this situation later this summer or autumn would not end well.
