'We're doing the best we can to hit on all fronts': VCFD provides update on destructive Mountain Fire

A break in the Santa Ana winds over the weekend allowed firefighters to make steady progress on the Mountain Fire in Ventura County, but there is still work to be done as winds are forecast to pick back up this week. 

Ventura County Fire Department Deputy Chief Chad Cook spoke with KTLA 5’s Annie Rose Ramos on Monday morning and provided an update on the status of the fire and efforts to extinguish it. 

“We’re actually looking a quite bit better...this fire has pushed a lot of our buttons,” Chief Cook said. “We are slowly getting around it.” 

As containment numbers continue to climb, crews began demobilizing some apparatus Monday morning, Chief Cook said, but the firefight is far from over. 

“We are really getting deeper inside the fire to make sure there is nothing that is going to rekindle or cause us any problems,” he said.  

At a community meeting held Sunday night for residents affected by the fire, some questioned why firefighters weren’t able to save more structures from being burned, with Chief Cook saying that the department even received hostile phone calls regarding how they were fighting the fire. 

The main factor contributing to the destruction people are asking about, the chief says, is strong winds. 

“Wind-driven fires are their own animal,” he said. “When you are up against the wind, you are in an environment that is out of your control, and all of us want to have control of the environment we’re in. And when our firefighters are put in these positions, people only have a small snapshot of what’s really going on at the scene.” 

“We deploy our resources into the streets, we try to make calculated decisions, and we understand that not everything is perfect,” Chief Cook continued. “But we ask our people to go imminently into these areas and we want them to do ‘life first,’ we want them to do primary searches, look for people and get them out of harm’s way. Sometimes, that comes at the cost of property.” 

At one point during the height of the firefight, crews were responding to 136 active rescues of people trapped in burning buildings, according to the chief, which underscores the need to quickly move personnel from actively fighting the flames to searching and rescuing. 

“When resources are on the street and someone says ‘Hey, that fire engine left,’ absolutely [it did] because we’re calling our companies that are out there in the field and saying, ‘We need you to report to two streets over, we have people trapped’,” Chief Cook told KTLA. “There are a lot of different people in our communities...the area we are in has some elderly people who cannot exit for themselves, and we have to put firefighters in there to physically remove them and assist them which takes us from the firefight.” 

Elaborating on the meeting that took place Sunday night, Chief Cook said that the men and women of the Ventura County Fire Department care more about the lives of local residents than their own. Some of them have even lost their homes in the fire, he added.

"It's an emotional thing when we drive through these neighborhoods because these are our families and our neighbors," he said. "When we see the aftermath and we deal with the people face to face...you see the damage that occurred and you have this guilt that you could have done more and could have been more successful with your actions."

"I have to let people know that [the fire department] does care about them," he said. "Not every decision we make is the right one, but we do the best we can with the number of inputs we have and we put lives first."

As of Monday morning, the blaze stood at 20,630 acres and was 36% contained, according to Cal Fire. A total of 174 structures have been destroyed with a further 74 damaged, and six people – including one firefighter – have been injured since the blaze broke out Wednesday morning near Balcom Canyon and Bradley roads in Somis.

For the most up-to-date information on the Mountain Fire from Cal Fire, click here.

Emergency updates from Ventura County officials can be found here.