Interstate 15 Route Through Cajon Pass Can Be Tinderbox Paved with Danger

At the Riverside Press-Enterprise, "CAJON PASS: Key Inland route paved with danger":

It is a beautiful place, where pine-covered peaks rise dramatically on either side from a deep canyon cut.

It is a busy place, where hundreds of thousands of people pass by every day on their way to work, on their way to make a delivery or on their way to Las Vegas.

It is a bone-dry place, too, where whistling winds wring moisture out of brush not long after winter rains depart.
“And we are in four-plus years of drought right now and that just makes it worse,” said Cal Fire Capt. Lucas Spelman, who works in Perris on a contract with the Riverside County Fire Department. “It’s as if someone had poured gasoline in that area before the fire started.”

That fire, of course, was the wildfire that roared across the Cajon Pass so fast Friday it trapped motorists on Interstate 15, igniting disturbing images of rows of cars burning on a prominent Southern California freeway as people literally ran for their lives.

“That really just really represents how explosive the vegetation is here in the Inland Empire right now,” Spelman said.

FIRE-PRONE ENVIRONMENT

The unprecedented inferno on the freeway pavement also underscored the natural conditions that make the Cajon Pass both beautiful and dangerous, even under normal circumstances.

“It’s kind of the gateway to the desert, so it’s a transition from the vegetation of the valley into the desert,” Spelman said.
There is plenty of fuel to burn. There is plenty of wind to fan the flames. And there are lots of potential sources of ignition – ranging from the cars that zip down the pass to the trains that meander through it, he said.

And it shows. Newspaper archives are chock-full of reports of fires in recent years.

The fire-prone environment is the backdrop of one of the busiest – and most important – transportation corridors in the region. According to Caltrans’ website, I-15 carries more than 160,000 vehicles a day through the pass.

Many of them, of course, are headed for the casinos in Nevada.

“This is the biggest tourism route in and out of the state because everybody’s headed back and forth to Vegas,” said Terri Kasinga, a spokeswoman for Caltrans in San Bernardino...