Strong winds fuel rapid spread of wildfires in Southern California : NPR

CAMARILLO, Calif. — A Southern California wildfire has destroyed 132 structures, mostly homes, in less than two days, fire officials said Thursday as raging winds were forecast to ease.

The fire started Wednesday morning in Ventura County and has grown to about 32 square miles at 5% containment. Its cause has not been determined.

Ten people have been injured in the course of the fire, Ventura County Sheriff James Fryhoff said. Most of them suffered from smoke inhalation or other non-life-threatening injuries.

Fire officials said 88 other structures were damaged but did not specify whether they had been burned or affected by water or smoke damage.

Some 10,000 people remained under evacuation orders Thursday as the Mountain Fire continued to threaten some 3,500 structures in suburban neighborhoods, ranches and agricultural areas around Camarillo in Ventura County.

County fire officials said crews working in steep terrain with support from water-dropping helicopters were focusing on protecting homes on hillsides along the fire’s northeast edge near the city of Santa Paula, home to more than 30,000 people.

Kelly Barton watched as firefighters sifted through the charred rubble of her parents’ ranch home of 20 years in the hills of Camarillo with a view of the Pacific Ocean. The crews uncovered two safes and her parents’ collection of vintage door knockers undamaged among the devastation.

“This was their forever retirement home,” Barton said Thursday. “Now in their 70s, they have to start over.”

Her father returned to the house an hour after evacuating Wednesday to find it already destroyed. He was able to move four of their vintage cars to safety but two — including a Chevy Nova he’d had since he was 18 — burned to “toast,” Barton said.

Officials in several Southern California counties urged residents to be on watch for fast-spreading blazes, power outages and downed trees during the latest round of notorious Santa Ana winds.

Santa Anas are dry, warm and gusty northeast winds that blow from the interior of Southern California toward the coast and offshore, moving in the opposite direction of the normal onshore flow that carries moist air from the Pacific. They typically occur during the fall months and continue through winter and into early spring.

Ariel Cohen, the National Weather Service’s meteorologist in charge in Oxnard, said Santa Ana winds were subsiding in the lower elevations but remained gusty across the higher elevations Thursday evening.

The red flag warnings, indicating conditions for high fire danger, expired in the area except for in the Santa Susana Mountains, Cohen said. The warnings will expire by 11 a.m. Friday in the mountains.

The Santa Ana winds are expected to return early-to-midweek next week, Cohen added.

The Mountain Fire was burning in a region that has seen some of California’s most destructive fires over the years. The fire swiftly grew from less than half a square mile to more than 16 square miles in little more than five hours on Wednesday. By Thursday evening it was mapped at about 32 square miles and Gov. Gavin Newsom had proclaimed a state of emergency in the county.

Marcus Eriksen, who has a farm in Santa Paula, said firefighters kept embers from spreading to his home, his vehicles and other structures even as piles of compost and wood chips were engulfed.

The flames were up to 30 feet tall and moving quickly, Eriksen said Thursday. Their speed and ferocity overwhelmed him, but the firefighters kept battling to save as much as they could on his property. Thanks to their work, “we dodged a bullet, big time,” he said.

Sharon Boggie said the fire came within 200 feet of her house in Santa Paula.

“We thought we were going to lose it at 7:00 this morning,” Boggie said Thursday as white smoke billowed through the neighborhood. She initially fled with her two dogs while her sister and nephew stayed behind. Hours later the situation seemed better, she said.

The Ventura County Office of Education announced that more than a dozen school districts and campuses in the county were closed Thursday, and a few were expected to be closed Friday.

Utilities in California began powering down equipment during high winds and extreme fire danger after a series of massive and deadly wildfires in recent years were sparked by electrical lines and other infrastructure.

Power was shut off to nearly 70,000 customers in five counties over the heightened risk, Southern California Edison said Thursday. Gabriela Ornelas, a spokesperson for Edison, could not immediately answer whether power had been shut off in the area where the Mountain Fire was sparked.

The wildfires burned in the same areas of other recent destructive infernos, including the 2018 Woolsey Fire, which killed three people and destroyed 1,600 homes near Los Angeles, and the 2017 Thomas Fire, which burned more than a thousand homes and other structures in Ventura and Santa Barbara counties. Southern California Edison has paid tens of millions of dollars to settle claims after its equipment was blamed for both blazes.