SoCal Wildfire Outlook "Incendiary"

It's been a spring filled with wildfires, from Georgia and Florida in the South to New Jersey in the East, Minnesota up north, and Arizona and California out west.

Southern California is bracing for what experts say could be its worst fire season yet.

In Studio City, Calif., homeowners are racing the clock to have all the tinder-dry brush cleared from around their property before hot summer days put the fire season into overdrive, reports The Early Show national correspondent Hattie Kauffman.

"We're concerned, just concerned about the irresponsible people who will throw their cigarette out the window when it's really hot and dry," Janice Hoffmann told Kauffman. "One little spark will just set it off."

Already, there have been major fires in Los Angeles' Griffith Park and nearby Catalina Island and, Kauffman said, it's only May — not even summer yet!

"Our national forests are definitely on their knees," warns Bill Patzert of NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, Calif. "They're extremely crispy. They're as dry as they've been in a decade."

Weather trackers at the JPL say last year's fire season never really ended because of a drought that forecasters predict will only get worse throughout the West.

"In terms of the outlook for the summer, the outlook is definitely incendiary," Patzert says. " … We've never been this dry, this early in the fire season."

Los Angeles normally gets 15 inches of rain per year. But there've been 3.2 inches since July, making this the driest year on record.

"The brush right now, even though it's only May," says L.A. County Fire Chief John Todd, "is more like what we would find in July and maybe August."

He says the hills should be green and covered with wild flowers this time of year. "A lot of our native brush would normally be green and flexible at this time of year, but it's already readily available to burn."

Todd agreed with Kauffman's assessment that it looks like kindling.

California firefighters have reason to fear, Kauffman points out. The catastrophic infernos of 2003 burned 3,600 homes and killed 24 people, including several firefighters.

"Our department has already gone into a summer season," Todd noted. "We're having additional resources respond to brush fires.

"People can help themselves quite a bit … doing their brush clearance. … Get that clearance done now. Don't wait till June or July, when the fire season is really even more upon us."

Homeowners trying to get ahead of the curve are keeping landscapers such as Courtney Kite of Silent Fire Landscaping "very busy. We're sleeping very few hours."

Homeowner Hoffman has taken the drought's urgency to heart: "We've got a sprinkler system on top of the roof, and we have a sprinkler system that goes about three-quarters up the hill, so we consider ourselves to be fairly safe, if you can imagine that!"

Making matters worse is that NASA scientists say Southern California is suffering a seven-year drought that will take more than one rainy season to end.