Ventura County is studying whether specially trained dogs could sniff out hidden embers after wildfires, responding to the 2024 Mountain fire near Camarillo and Moorpark. That blaze burned nearly 20,000 acres and damaged or destroyed 369 structures.
The Ventura County Board of Supervisors on Tuesday, Sept. 22, approved the county's response to a 2025-26 Civil Grand Jury wildfire preparedness report. Among the directives: the Ventura County Fire Protection District must assess whether dogs can be trained to detect buried embers that standard equipment might miss, first reported by the Moorpark Acorn.
The county expects to complete its analysis by Dec. 25.
The grand jury recommended the Fire Department investigate the feasibility of incorporating an ember-detecting canine into post-fire operations by Dec. 31, 2026. A second recommendation called on the Board of Supervisors to support any effort to obtain and train such a dog.
The concept differs from how fire departments currently use dogs. K-9s have long assisted in detecting accelerants during arson investigations and locating survivors at disaster sites. An ember-detection dog would instead be deployed after a wildfire to find residual burning material that could reignite.
Mountain fire origins
The recommendation traces directly to the Mountain fire's cause. Investigators determined the blaze started Nov. 6, 2024, when extreme winds uncovered hot debris left from the Balcom fire, a 1.8-acre brush fire near Somis that firefighters had contained a week earlier. The debris came from a burned tractor tire and blew into dry vegetation outside the containment area.
After the Balcom fire was contained on Oct. 30, 2024, a fire department drone with an infrared camera identified heat signatures near the dozer line and by the tractor's wheels the following morning. Crews dug out the hot spot near the dozer line. The heat on the tractor was deemed normal for heavy metal rims that would retain heat overnight, and the incident was closed.
Civilians visited the burn area multiple times over the following days and reported no signs of smoke or fire. Rain fell in the area on Nov. 2, 2024, according to the city of Camarillo's account of the fire department's findings.
Then came the extreme winds.
Fire Chief Dustin Gardner said in November 2025, when the department announced its determination of the fire's cause, that crews had used all available technology to contain the initial blaze but that the extreme conditions on Nov. 6, 2024, overwhelmed those efforts.
What the county plans to do
The Fire Protection District will contact fire cause-and-origin investigators and Urban Search and Rescue K-9 handlers to explore whether dogs could be trained effectively for ember detection. Officials also plan to research a European program cited by the grand jury.
That program is based in northern Sweden, where a Hovawart named Stella became the first certified wildfire dog deployed by a Swedish government authority. Stella trained for two years to detect the scent of lingering embers. On one of her first assignments in 2025, she alerted her handler to glowing material hidden beneath a tree stump. A regional official told Swedish public broadcaster SVT he would not have found the hot spot without the dog.
At the time of the grand jury report, Sweden had just seven certified ember-detection dogs.
The county acknowledged it has not identified a U.S. fire department that has fielded and validated a canine program for detecting buried embers. Technology to detect buried embers already exists, though effectiveness can depend on the depth and heat signature of the material, the county said.
The Moorpark Acorn noted that no evidence exists showing an ember-detection dog would have found the heat that remained after the Balcom fire or prevented the Mountain fire.
Gardner announced in January 2026 that the department had asked Cal Fire to conduct an independent review of its response to the Balcom fire, including command decisions before crews left the scene. That review remains pending.
