CLEAR BRUSH BEFORE BLAZES.

Byline: Patricia Farrell Aidem Staff Writer

SANTA CLARITA - The verdant mountainsides of Santa Clarita, brilliant after the winter's record rain, have faded to a patchwork of beige and brown with just a smattering of pale green hanging on as summer nears.

To the untrained eye, it's a sign of the changing seasons. To firefighters, it's fuel.

``All the grass growth from the rain, it's definitely drying out, which means it will quickly spread fire into the larger, heavier brush,'' said Assistant Chief John Todd of the Angeles County Fire Department's forestry division. ``Right now, if flames get in the heavier fuel, they'll slow down, but later into the summer, that heavier fuel will ignite.''

The Fire Department has declared today the start of the 2005 fire season. Despite the record 50 inches of rain that soaked Santa Clarita, the brush fire danger is mounting, Todd said.

``It only takes a few days of this heat and the green goes away fast,'' he said last week.

Year after year, fire officials anticipate volatile fire seasons in Southern California, but several conditions - mainly fuel moisture, weather and wind patterns - must fall into place, Todd said. This year in Santa Clarita, the fuel is plentiful - drying grass is abundant and the mountains and canyons are covered in flammable chaparral.

Fire officials are urging residents of the ``urban interface'' - homes that border wilderness - to begin cutting back brush and keeping it clear through the summer.

``Now's the time to go clear it before the stuff gets mature and dry and it's harder to remove,'' Todd said. ``The goal is to get it done by July 4.''

On a larger scale, the Fire Department plans to reduce brush in a 6,226-acre area near Val Verde when conditions allow, said J. Lopez, the department's deputy forester. Brush in Hasley and Oak canyons, which link the communities of Castaic, Piru and Val Verde, poses a wildfire threat and will be removed by several methods, including cattle grazing, controlled burning and manual clearing.

``The potential for a major brush fire is there. It's always there,'' Lopez said. ``We try to anticipate problem areas and reduce the threat.''

Plans also are in the works for fire prevention exercises over 1,650 acres in Valencia and Stevenson Ranch, west of Interstate 5, where herds of goats have been brought in to eat the grass and crews are removing brush. Prescribed burns also are planned.

Early this month, crews worked with county jail inmates to clear brush on the ground of the Peter J. Pitchess Detention Center in Castaic, an exercise also used as training. Burns typically are planned in June or early July, when the vegetation has dried but before the heat of the fire season peaks. Lopez met Wednesday with the National Weather Service as part of the planning process.

``The timing has to be just right,'' Lopez said.

Patricia Farrell Aidem, [phone]

pat.aidem(at)dailynews.com